The Seal
by Mousme
Summary: The AU in which Steve is a superhero and Danny is still a cop, and they still sort of drive each other nuts. Together, they have to save the world from certain doom.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **The Seal**

Summary: _A figure steps out of the shadows, and it takes all of Danny's training not to shoot then and there. "Have no fear, citizen!" a voice calls out. "Everything is under control!"_ Or, the AU in which Steve is a superhero and Danny is still a cop, and they still sort of drive each other nuts. Together, they have to save the world from certain doom.

Characters: Steve/Danny, Chin Ho, Kono, Meka, assorted other canon characters

Rating: NC-17

Wordcount: 29,815

Disclaimer: Playing in CBS' sand box.

Warnings: explicit sex, superhero tropes like whoa, doomsday devices

Neurotic Author's Note #1: Written for **h50_bigbang**. I would like to encourage everyone to go and see the funny and whimsical art produced by the lovely and talented **vahly** at her LJ! Go tell her how awesome she is! I'll wait here while you do that.

Neurotic Author's Note #2: I owe love and candy and flowers to my two betas, **huntress69** and **yasminke**, without whom this fic would be the poorer. Remaining mistakes are mine, since I stubbornly cling to my Canadian spelling habits. ;) All the awesome is theirs, all the weirdness is mine.

Neurotic Author's Note #3: I don't really know where this came from, but one day I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Steve was a superhero?" And then this happened.

* * *

Detective Danny Williams has learned the hard way not to rely on luck. It's not that he doesn't believe in luck, of course –there's more than enough evidence out there that luck exists and is a powerful force in people's lives, especially the lives of police officers. It's that Danny's luck in particular has always been spectacularly shitty.

Take the last couple of years for instance. He got himself shot in the line of duty by a guy aiming for someone else, spent months in rehab and came back to work only to find that his partner had been transferred elsewhere, leaving him stranded behind a desk with nothing to distract him from the fact that his wife was divorcing him and taking him for every single penny in his bank account. Adding to his troubles because he couldn't afford a good lawyer on a cop's salary, he not only lost a significant portion of his pay in said divorce, but also got royally screwed when it came to custody, getting his Gracie only every second weekend. Then, because clearly there hadn't been enough insults added to his injuries, following the divorce settlement his wife decided to remarry a good-looking, ridiculously wealthy hotshot real estate developer and moved six thousand miles away to an island in the middle of the Pacific, forcing him to follow her to Hawaii unless he wanted to forgo the measly two weekends a month he got to spend with his daughter.

In short Danny figured out a while back that if he trusted to luck, he will inevitably land in the shitter. Better to rely on good old-fashioned hard work in every aspect of his life and that way things will generally go according to plan. Except, of course, when they don't, because has he mentioned lately how he has really shitty luck? Even the most careful planning is useless in the face of Lady Luck's finding her amusement at Danny's expense. That's why he happens to be standing in a convenience store behind a rack full of an assortment of chips –annoyed that he doesn't recognize half the brands there, because nothing in Hawaii even makes sense, like pineapple on pizza–when he hears a quiet scuffling sound coming from near the cash register, and a male voice, high and nervous-sounding, barking orders.

"Empty the cash, now!"

He can't help the surge of adrenaline that sets his heart racing at the sound. He's off-duty, but that doesn't make him any less an officer of the law. He pulls out his phone, risks a quick look past the shelves to catch a glimpse of the offenders while dialing 911 awkwardly with one hand, the other reaching for his holstered weapon.

"This is Detective Danny Williams of HPD," he keeps his voice low while providing his badge number and location. "I have a code 6 in progress, two suspects, one armed with a nine-millimetre. Medium build, one white male, one with a dark complexion. White male is armed, wearing a blue ball cap, red t-shirt and denim vest, the other is wearing a black t-shirt with some sort of band logo. Requesting back-up now."

He switches off the phone, concentrates all his attention on the altercation taking place at the cash register. The cashier is a young girl who can't be much over eighteen, and she's crying, on the verge of hysterics. She clearly isn't emptying the money drawer fast enough for the hoodlums' liking, because they're both screaming increasingly loudly at her, which luckily enough not only flusters her more, but gives Danny the opportunity to flank them without being seen or heard. Once he's sure he has the drop on them he raises his weapon, pointing it straight at the gunman's head.

"HPD, put your weapon down!"

Nothing of the sort happens, naturally, but it does serve to take the gunman's attention off the cashier, who promptly throws herself to the floor. The gunman –barely more than a kid himself– whirls around to face Danny, gun wavering wildly. It's pretty obvious that both these kids have very little idea of what they're doing and are now scared shitless because they've been caught.

"Put your weapon down slowly, and lie facedown on the floor!" he barks, weapon still held level in front of him. "Hands where I can see them!"

They bolt.

Once minute he's staring down the barrel of the guy's nine-mil, the next the two kids are booking it for the back of the convenience store and have disappeared through the fire exit. Danny spares a glance for the cashier, just long enough to make sure she isn't injured, before taking off in pursuit. He bursts through the emergency door, handgun at the ready, heart racing, blood singing because, in spite of the fact that he has no idea what he's going to find out there, this is the part of his job that he loves the most. He finds himself in a dark alley, the ground still wet from the last cloudburst, a sickly pool of yellow light from a nearby basement window the only source of illumination. A flicker of movement in the shadows catches his eye and he whips his gun up again.

"HPD, freeze!"

A figure steps out of the shadows, and it takes all of Danny's training not to shoot then and there. "Have no fear, citizen!" a voice calls out. "Everything is under control!"

Danny sputters. He can't help himself. "What do you mean, everything's under control? What is this?"

"No, really," the voice insists. It's a nice-sounding voice, male, low and a little mellifluous, not that Danny pays attention to that sort of thing. Well, he does, but only in the way that he pays attention to all unknown voices to be sure he's not in the face of a potential threat. "Everything is fine, you have nothing to fear."

"I'm a cop, you ass, I'm not afraid. Did you see two kids run out through here?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," the voice replies, and then the figure steps out right into the pool of light.

Danny gawks. He thinks he's perfectly justified in gawking, because he feels like he's stepped right into the middle of a comic book convention. The guy in front of him is tall, much taller than he is, although since Danny has never really been blessed in the way of height that's not saying much. Being short hasn't been one of his hang-ups since he was sixteen years old and realized that you didn't need to be a basketball player in order to be a success in life. No, it's not so much that this guy is a good couple of inches over six feet and built like he could run a couple of marathons back-to-back without breaking a sweat. It's that he's wearing a cape. A black one. And a green outfit.

"Is that spandex?"

The guy scowls. Or at least Danny things he scowls, because the black mask hiding his eyes makes it a little difficult to see. In any case, his mouth does this thing which screws up his whole face like he's about to have an aneurysm.

"No, it's not spandex. It's a special fabric blend designed for maximum flexibility and to wick away moisture when necessary."

"So, spandex." Danny is acutely aware that he may well be losing track of his main objective, here. It's just that he's never met a guy in a khaki green spandex outfit, complete with black belt, black cape and black mask before.

"It's not spandex!"

"Fine, whatever, Aquaman. Where did my suspects go?"

"They're right here. And that's not my name."

The guy turns away, reaches down behind him and hauls up both the unfortunate kids by the backs of their shirts. They're bound with some sort of narrow cord, neatly gagged with cloth in their mouths, their eyes wide and rolling in their heads. The guy's face breaks into a thousand-watt grin, visible even in this dark alley. It's oddly cute, like a giant golden retriever bringing back a possum carcass to its owner.

"Oh my God," Danny holsters his weapon, wondering just how much more surreal this day is going to get. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that you're, what, a costumed crime fighter? Really?"

"What's so hard to believe about that?" the guy is clearly miffed.

"For one, this is life, not a comic book. For two, you might just have screwed up my whole arrest, numb-nuts!"

"What? What are you talking about? I helped! I totally nailed them for you!"

Danny rolls his eyes. "Step away from the subjects, please, so I can book 'em properly."

The guy looks at him like he's nuts. "You want me to step away?"

"I'm sorry —was I not speaking English?"

"Fine."

The guy backs away a couple of steps, and Danny steps forward, drops to a crouch next to the white kid who'd been waving the gun before. "Okay, kid. Since you're all tied up, I'm going to ask you to nod if you understand. And quit wriggling, I haven't seen this good a job of trussing up a calf since I attended a rodeo one time. That's an event best left not spoken of, I promise you. You get me?"

The kid nods.

"Good job. Now, I'm going to tell you your rights, and you nod in the right places. You have the right to remain silent. In fact, right now, you don't appear to have much choice. However, when I take the gag out of your mouth, anything you do say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you are unable to afford an attorney, one will be provided to you at no cost. Do you understand?"

The kid nods again, a little more frantically, twisting on the ground in a futile attempt to look at his captor.

"How about you, junior?" Danny asks the other kid. "You going to make me repeat myself, or are you going to nod like a good boy and let me save my breath?"

He gets another nod.

"Fan-fucking-tastic. You guys may have ruined my night, but at least you're thinking inside the box now." He can hear the sound sirens approaching ―his awaited backup, no doubt. He checks his watch, sees that about seven minutes have elapsed since his call to dispatch. Not bad at all. "Okay, so my friends at HPD are going to take you two bozos in, I am going to have to fill out a metric assload of paperwork, and just maybe I'll get lucky and get home before midnight."

He pushes himself to his feet. "As for you, you loon," he turns to where the mysterious green-clad stranger was standing only a minute before, only to find that he's vanished. "Oh for crying out loud! Figures," he mutters, turning his eyes to the heavens and throwing his hands up in supplication. "This whole place is insane."

* * *

Sorting out the suspects is a matter of routine. As much as Danny didn't want to get caught in the middle of a convenience store robbery, it's a run-of-the-mill crime, and it gets treated as such. Until, of course, he makes the mistake of being entirely, 100% honest, and revealing that it was a stranger wearing green spandex who should actually get the credit for the collar. Then Danny's life gets a whole lot more complicated in a hurry.

Danny's boss, for one, is not amused. For the most part, he and Danny get along. His Lieutenant is a short, squat man with a pleasant face and an easy smile, and an even easier scowl for perps. He has unerringly had Danny's back the entire time Danny's been with HPD, defending him where other cops dismissed him as a _haole_ ―and to Danny's ears, no matter the real meaning, the word always screams "outcast"― with no understanding of the island. Danny's a good cop, prides himself on his work, and his lieutenant knows it and always, always backs up his plays. Until tonight.

"Please tell me you're kidding me, Williams. Or you maybe you spent too long outside in the sun? A pasty, blond _haole_ like you, maybe you got sunstroke and imagined it all."

Danny doesn't flinch, because good cops don't flinch at a little name-calling, but he has to confess that it stings a little bit, being called that by the one man he thought would never use the term on him. It makes him wonder if maybe the Lieutenant doesn't call him that behind his back when he can get away with it. It's little things like that which end up eroding trust on a team, he thinks a little bitterly.

"No, sir, I didn't imagine any of it," he says firmly. "I think the guy's probably a nutcase with a hero complex, and while he did us a pretty solid favour here, we're going to have to be on the lookout for him, because the last thing we need around here is a vigilante."

The Lieutenant sighs. "Go write up your report, Williams, and go home. You're off the clock, anyway, so we'll discuss this more tomorrow morning. Go on, get out of my office."

Danny doesn't get home anywhere close to the time he would have liked to. He's always prided himself on being meticulous in his work, and since he was off-duty when the excrement hit the proverbial rotary oscillator, it means that his report has to be proportionately more meticulous. He has to justify drawing his weapon, potentially putting the life of the cashier at risk, all that jazz. There are days, he reflects glumly as he sits and stares at the blinking cursor on his computer monitor, when it feels like drawing your gun is way more hassle than it's worth. In fact, if he can solve a case without drawing his weapon once, he counts it as a bigger win than if he does have to draw it. If you're shooting at people, he reasons, then it means you've done something wrong.

Which brings him back to his mystery man in the spandex. Like he said before, Danny's a good cop. He's been here for nearly a year now, and being a good cop means he's got more than a few really good arrests under his belt. He follows the simplest of ground rules for solving crime: look for motive and opportunity, and when the need arises follow the money. As a result, even if he's not going to win any popularity contests around the precinct, it has at least afforded him a certain level of respect from most of his colleagues and garnered him a reputation for being able to get the job done, even if he does wear a tie when he's at work, like normal professionals, never mind what people here think.

His partner Meka has long since gone home for the night, as well he should have. Meka is just about the only friend Danny's got on this stupid island, and even then it's more of a professional friendship. He likes Meka, Meka likes him, sometimes they go out for beer after a case, but that's about it. Still, he would have loved to talk to him about this latest turn for the weird in his life. But, since Meka's not available, he starts making the rounds of the officers left in the precinct, making discreet inquiries as he goes. He makes light of the situation, laughs a little about the strange guy in the green spandex, and is met mostly with disbelieving stares or amused laughter. He's beginning to think that it's a lost cause when finally he strikes gold.

Kono Kalakaua is the rookiest of all rookie cops. She graduated from the Academy about two and a half minutes ago, and is turning out to be one of the most promising young cops on the force. Not that that makes any difference to how the others treat her. Danny doesn't have the full details, but he's been here long enough to know that her cousin used to be a cop and resigned from the force under a cloud of suspicion. Police precincts are small, tightly-knit communities, and HPD is smaller and more tightly-knit than average, and that means that most of the cops here look at Kono askance, even her training sergeant, which Danny thinks is a crying shame. He's never been one for visiting the sins of the father on the son, and especially not the sins of the cousin on the... other cousin. As a result, he and Kono have struck up this... well, he's not sure how to qualify it. They're not exactly friends, but they chat together at the coffee machine. He flirted with her once as a matter of course ―she's hot and pretty badass when it comes to ass-kicking― but there was never really a spark on either side. She seems to like him well enough, but it's not like they hang out or anything.

As it is, she nods when he asks her about the guy. "Oh, you mean The Seal."

"The Seal?"

"Yeah, that's right. Damn, I haven't heard that name in forever. It was a story that my dad used to tell me when I was a kid, about this guy who could move through water like it was nothing and was really strong and all that. He wore a green outfit and helped the police clean up the streets of Honolulu when crime got out of hand."

"So it's a story."

"Well, yeah. I guess maybe this guy heard the same story I did and decided that he was going to take up the mantle or something."

"Lunatic," Danny mutters, dropping his forehead into the palm of his hand. "Why do people think it's cool to dress in spandex and run around being vigilantes?"

Kono grins at him. "Come on, Danny, I thought all little boys wanted to be Batman?"

"Yeah, when I was nine," Danny points out, hands flapping. "You're supposed to grow out of that and become a cop if you're serious about stopping crime! It's not like there's an evil mastermind out there planning to, I don't know, destroy the island with a giant death ray or something," he continues, gesturing expansively to include all of Hawaii in the scope of his hand movements. "It's just crooks, doing what crooks do, and the only way to make them stop what they're doing is to follow due process."

Kono rolls her eyes and gestures elaborately at her uniform. "Preaching to the choir there, Detective Williams."

Danny has the grace to look a little sheepish. "Right, sorry. It's not about you, I get that. It's just that that guy could have gotten himself killed, and then I would have had no suspects and an extra dead body on my hands and all because, what, he wanted to be a superhero?"

"I feel you. But it all turned out okay in the end, didn't it?"

Danny sighs. "Yeah, I guess. But my gut tells me that not only is this not over yet, it's all going to head South in a really spectacular way, and my gut is rarely wrong."

* * *

Danny's darling ex-wife decides to cancel Grace's weekend with him two days later, which effectively drives all thoughts of The Seal out of his mind permanently. Instead, he finds himself trying very hard ―and failing― to keep a civilized tone on the phone with her as he sits in his car on the side of the road. At least he had the presence of mind to pull over, he tells himself, because otherwise his car would probably have had a serious disagreement with an oncoming semi, and lost.

"Damn it, Rachel, you can't keep jerking me around like this!" he yells into the phone. "No! No, I don't care if this is an important tennis tournament that only takes place once a year and you and Stan want her to have the 'special experience' or whatever. There are plenty of special experiences that don't involve watching people dressed in overly tight white clothing running around on a clay court whacking a damn green ball around!

"What? No! That's not what I said! Rachel, I get to see my kid exactly four days out of the month. Four! Is it too much to ask that you not reduce that number by half on a whim? God. Fine!" he runs his hands through his hair, tugging at the strands that could probably stand a trim by now. He's never figured out a hairstyle other than the one he has, with his hair slicked back over his head, but it turns out it's a useful haircut to have when talking to his ex-wife makes him want to tear it out by the roots. "But I expect you to arrange for a substitution the minute you get back, you hear me? Fine! Good bye!"

He jabs the 'end call' button as viciously as he can, lamenting the days of rotary phones when hanging up on people was so much more viscerally satisfying. As it is, if he tries to slam this phone against anything, he'll probably break it and end up having to replace it out of his own pocket. HPD isn't exactly forthcoming with funds to replace cell phones broken in a fit of rage against your ex-wife's manipulative, scheming ways.

Danny forces himself to take a breath, and another, before taking the road again. He performs a U-turn, can't bring himself to face going back to his empty apartment right now. He may as well go back to the office, sort through the mess that's on his desk and only pretending to be organized. There's a fair bit of paperwork left over from previous cases, and he and Meka have just landed a jewellery store job that looks like there might be some promising leads to be had there, if they work the case right. For one thing, the thieves didn't take everything, concentrating instead on the very valuable stuff ―diamonds and other precious stones― but ignored a lot of the gold jewellery in favour of all the silver.

"I don't get it," Danny says, tucking his office phone between his ear and shoulder. Meka's already at home with his wife, the lucky bastard, not that Danny begrudges him that. If anyone understands the importance of making sure your family is taken care of, it's him. Too bad Rachel never saw it that way. "I mean, why take all the really valuable gemstones but not the gold and all the silver? Where's the profit in it? It makes no sense!" he flicks a hand at the papers and photographs in front of him, even though Meka can't see him.

"I couldn't tell you, _brah_," Meka sounds a little exasperated, though it doesn't remove the fondness from his voice. "That's why we're investigating. Except, last time I checked, we had no lead so white-hot it can't wait until Monday morning. Why are you even at work on a Friday night?"

"Rachel and Stan are taking Gracie to a special tennis tournament in Newport."

"I see." There's sympathy in Meka's voice, which Danny wouldn't take from a lot of people, but from him at least he knows it's genuine. "Okay, Danny. Just try to go home at a reasonable hour at least, would you? No all-nighters. Promise me."

"Yes, I promise I won't bury myself in work in an attempt to forget that I'm not going to see my daughter until the beginning of next month," Danny places a hand over his heart, and Meka laughs.

"Okay, then. I'm going to hold you to that come Monday morning. Take care."

It's not that Danny lied, or anything. He totally intended to call it an early(ish) night once that phone call was over. No, really. But sometimes you just get into a kind of groove, and when that happens it's kind of difficult to let go of it. Danny's in the zone, and he can totally tell that he's going to make a huge breakthrough on this case, if only he can figure out just what it is that's hinky about the whole thing. He sorts through all the papers on his desk, barely taking the time to read them while he works on the case at the back of his mind. It's rote work, perfect for letting his mind wander just far enough outside the confines of the box and mull over the problem the way he can never do during the day when there are all sorts of people milling about. They invariably break his concentration, ruin what he was trying to achieve. It was the same way when he was still a Jersey cop, living in Hoboken with Rachel and Gracie, and he never could get Rachel to understand that he worked better at night when there was a big case to solve. All he ever got from her were nasty comments about being more faithful to his job than to her, about Rachel's being 'the other woman' in their relationship that Danny swore he'd leave his wife for, etc.

It's not that she didn't have a point, of course she did, but it wasn't like he was neglecting his family, either. He was always there for parent-teacher night at Gracie's school. He was the one who dropped her off in the morning and picked her up from school three times out of five when he wasn't on the clock. Sometimes even when he was on the clock he purposefully wouldn't take a lunch hour just so he could go and pick her up anyway. He knew even then that Gracie loved these times when it was just the two of them, her and her 'Danno' as she called him from the first day she tried to say his name and didn't quite succeed. He just couldn't see why Rachel couldn't see the efforts he was making too.

He looks down now to find himself staring at the empty surface of his desk. It's not totally empty, but he doesn't remember the last time he's had his desk this properly organized. It's not a bad way to work, actually. He's never thought much of people who leave huge piles of paperwork on their desks just to prove how busy they are. As far as he's concerned, a cluttered desk is just a sign of poor organizational skills. Danny makes a point of always keeping his desk clear, his inbox empty except for what's come in during the last 48 hours, his outbox empty by the end of every day. Sure, sometimes things get a little hectic and the paperwork falls behind, but he always catches up. It's all part of being a good cop: follow the evidence, do the legwork, and when the case is done, do your homework. It's not the flashy stuff that wins the case, it's the paperwork. Getting up on the stand and having all your notes in order, having your evidence prepared, being able to field every single missile that the defense attorneys lob at your head. Even though he doesn't generally brag about it, Danny is proud of the fact that he's never faced a trial attorney he couldn't take.

Now all that's left on his desk is the current burglary case. The few witness statements they were able to get, and a whole ton of crime scene photos. He leaves the statements on the desk, grabs the photos and starts pinning them up on the corkboard behind his desk, trying to keep them more or less in the same order as they were taken, roughly in the same layout as the store itself. He swivels in his chair, staring at the pictures as though they're the predictions of Nostradamus himself.

"What am I missing here?" he murmurs to himself.

The burglary was a surgical strike. No alarms went off, no one saw anyone go in and out of the store. The front window was neatly broken, using what looks like a glasscutter and a blunt instrument to make a hole big enough for a grown man to go through. Probably more than one man, by the size of the heist. It's at least a two-man job, maybe more. The jewellery cases were all similarly broken, but instead of smashing the glass it was simply cut away, the broken section likely removed with the aid of some kind of suction cup. Fibre evidence removed from the scene suggests that the burglars lined the edges of the cut glass with some kind of fabric to avoid cutting themselves on the sharp edges, but so far forensics has only turned up that it was white cotton, which doesn't get them very far. No fingerprints anywhere, no shoeprints even though it had been a rainy night. Well, there were some footprints, but nothing to suggest conclusively that any of them belonged to the burglars. In short, if they're going to get these guys and convict them, it's not going to be thanks to the awesome powers of science, unlike what the TV shows would have you believe. Once again, Danny will take old-fashioned detective work over forensics any day, because evidence is far too easily contaminated.

He drains the dregs of his now very cold cup of coffee, and realizes the drawbacks of having consumed about six cups of the stuff in the last two and a half hours or so. "Don't go anywhere," he winks at the photos, wondering if talking to the evidence suggests he's lost his mind, then dismisses the thought and goes off to hit the can.

With business thoroughly taken care of, hands washed ―thanks to Gracie's kindergarten teacher Danny will now forever be stuck singing the birthday song in his head whether he wants to or not while he washes his hands― he makes his way back into the now-thoroughly deserted office, and stops dead in his tracks.

"What the ever-loving hell?"

The photographs are gone. All of them, in the blink of an eye. The thumbtacks he used to pin them to the board have all been lined up neatly on one side of the board, arranged in four rows and sorted by colour, which is just weird. Immediately he whips around, looking for any sign of the intruder, listening for the sound of footsteps or maybe a door opening and closing, or a window maybe, but there's nothing but silence. He didn't even have the radio playing. He pulls his weapon, thinking regretfully that this is the second time this week he's had to do it, which is just a crying shame. Hawaii brings this out in him, is what it is. The whole damned string of islands is honestly certifiably nuts. A glance at his desk shows that his copies of the witness statements are gone too. None of what was taken was the original evidence ―photos can be reprinted, and the statements were just photocopies he made so he could write notes in the margins if he wanted to― but it's the principle of the thing, he thinks, more than a little insulted at the idea that someone broke into his damned precinct and stole his damned evidence! It's galling, is what it is.

More embarrassing than anything else, of course, is the fact that he now has to report that the damn precinct has been burglarized when he was the only one in there. There's a small swarm of I.A. cops who descend on him in the early hours of Saturday morning, looking at him with their suspicious, beady little fish eyes and asking really stupid questions.

"No, I didn't see anyone, and yes, I'm sure that the photos were pinned up on the board where I left them! No, I have no idea why anyone would want to steal those particular things. No, I don't know who it was and no, I also don't know if they knew that what they were stealing wasn't original documentation," he bursts out in exasperation by the time the third hour of his interview has gone by.

"It's just procedure, Detective," the I.A. suit tells him blandly. "You will admit that it's strange that you left for what you claim is less than five minutes, only to return to find that your desk was cleared out."

"Not cleared out," Danny points out. "Just the evidence lying in plain sight. Photos and statements. Nothing else was touched, not my files, not my badge which was right there, either."

"What about your weapon?"

"I don't leave my gun lying around unattended."

"You took it into the men's room with you?"

Danny rolls his eyes. "You don't need to make it sound depraved. I keep my weapon in my holster when it's not locked up in the gun safe. It's procedure. The only time it's in neither of those places is when I'm at home by myself without my daughter, which is when I keep it with my badge next to my bed."

"That's a very responsible attitude," comes the dry comment.

"Yeah, well, I don't know why you sound so damned surprised."

"Not everyone shows this amount of dedication to proper procedure."

"Seriously, are you being sarcastic with me? I am the last person with whom you should be sarcastic, I will have you know, you pompous, self-righteous stuffed suit. I have followed regulations from the minute I stepped foot on this stupid tropical-fruit-laden pile of dirt sticking out from the ocean. In fact, I went out of my way to learn the differences between procedure here and procedure back where I come from, to make sure that I wasn't treading on any toes. And what have I gotten in return? Nothing but grief. And now I have to sit in this really uncomfortable chair listening to you question my integrity, when I should be at my desk sorting through papers that I no longer have because some invisible nutcase decided to steal them!"

The suit takes a few more notes, nods imperturbably. Danny wonders if anyone would care if he lunged across the table and strangled him. The thought of the resulting paperwork nips that idea in the bud. "Thank you, Detective, that will be all for now. We'll be in touch if we have further questions."

"Yeah, I'll bet," Danny mutters under his breath, stalks back to his desk.

* * *

Malasadas are just about the only good thing that Danny has discovered about Hawaii. They are deep fried, delicious goodness, better even than the doughnuts from that special place in Hoboken. They're not enough to reconcile him with the fact that he has to live in a place where there's never any snow and where people seem to think that wearing shirts with really ugly and loud prints is something to aspire to, but they are a definite consolation in times like these.

He's made new copies of his witness statements, obtained new copies of the photographs from before, and all before lunch. Sure, being in a room early in the morning with I.A. didn't help much with his growing problem of sleep-deprivation, but at least it meant that he got out before mid-morning, and malasadas are easily obtained. He's licking the remnants of one from his thumb when he gets a call from Meka.

"You better get out here, Danny, we've got another one."

"Another burglary?"

"Looks like it. Different store, same M.O. as far as I can tell."

"I'm on my way," Danny's already rolling up the paper bag with the remnants of his malasadas, takes the time to put away his hard-won new copies of the evidence in the drawer of his desk and turns the key, pocketing it before he leaves.

The drive out is a fairly short one, now that he's become accustomed to negotiating the streets of Honolulu without getting hopelessly lost each and every time. He pulls his silver Camaro into the closest available parking spot to the very conspicuous crime scene. There are shards of glass littering the sidewalk, glittering in the mid-morning sun, a neatly cut outline in the glass door of the store. The entire sidewalk around the store has been cordoned off with yellow tape, and Danny ducks under it easily after making his way through the crowd of onlookers. He finds the crime scene photographer hard at work a few paces away, catches his attention with a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey Junior," he greets him. "Do me a favour?"

Junior isn't Danny's number one fan, but he doesn't really dislike him either. He shrugs. "What sort of favour?"

"Can you get me some shots of the crowd? I have a feeling that if this is going to be a series, we might get lucky if we pay attention to the Looky-Lou's who come around afterward. Something tells me at least one of our guys is getting off on not leaving any evidence behind, and it's easier to get off when you've got a clear visual on the people you're screwing."

"That is a really nasty metaphor, but I take your point," Junior grimaces. "You got it."

"Thanks, Junior. You seen where Meka is?"

"Back of the store, talking to the owner last I checked."

Danny heads inside, carefully skirting the broken glass on the floor, pulling on the plastic purple gloves that seem to come standard in Hawaii. He figures maybe HPD got themselves a bulk discount on account of how ugly the damned gloves are, because he's never in his entire career ever seen another police force use anything other than white latex to process a scene. Or white non-latex, he supposes, for those few people unlucky enough to be allergic to the stuff.

Meka is talking to a tall, good-looking guy who looks to be of Chinese origin, not that Danny is an expert in these matters. From the way the guy's dressed, down to the rubber truncheon, Danny guesses they're not looking at the store owner.

"Meka," he says by way of greeting, insinuating himself into the conversation. It's not like subtlety has ever been his strong suit anyway.

"Howzit?" Meka greets him back, then jerks his head at the guy. "Danny, this is Chin Ho Kelly. Apparently he does some security work freelance for the store owner here."

Danny makes a face. "Bang-up job, my friend." That's when the name clicks. "Didn't you used to work for HPD?"

The guy stiffens. "Yeah, I did."

"Okay, then. So what can you tell us?"

It turns out that the guy can't tell them much of anything. He works for the storeowner as a security consultant, and sometimes comes in to supervise deliveries when they're especially valuable. They received just such a delivery yesterday afternoon, which went off without a hitch, with half of the new inventory going directly into the display cases and half going into the secure safes at the back of the store. It's a hell of a coincidence, though, Danny thinks.

"So you just happen to receive this huge delivery of very valuable jewellery, and the very same night you get robbed?"

Kelly nods. "It's not a coincidence. Someone must have tipped them off. And before you ask, it wasn't me."

"Uh-huh. Well, normally I'd be happy to take your word for it, but hopefully you won't mind if my partner here, who is of a much more suspicious mindset, does silly things like check your alibi and whatnot?"

"Danny..." Meka murmurs, and okay, maybe he spread it a little thick there.

"Knock yourselves out," Kelly says impassively, his face a carefully schooled mask of neutrality, but Danny sees a flash of something in his eyes that looks like righteous anger. "I do have an alibi for last night, as it happens, although I suppose there's no way to prove that I didn't supply the information to someone else for a cut of the profits. On that, you'll just have to take my word for it until you find the people who actually did supply the information."

"Excuse us for a second," Danny pulls Meka aside. "Okay, I don't have all the details on what went down with this guy. All I know is that he resigned from HPD a while back, and that's it. So what's the deal, here?"

Meka gives him one of his patented unreadable glances. Danny thinks maybe he either took lessons from Kelly, or vice versa. "He left because money went missing from the evidence locker after a big drug bust. He maintained his innocence and I.A. never proved anything, but no one would work with him. He was forced out, basically."

Danny whistles softly. "Good thing we don't have anything like 'innocent until proven guilty' in our justice system to inconvenience us. So he was suspected of being dirty but no one could prove anything?"

Meka shrugs. "They never found the money, and from what I know I.A. has been monitoring all his accounts secretly ever since he left, with nary a trace of a transaction. He hasn't bought anything, developed any new habits, nothing. If anything, he's been spending less money, commensurately with his drop in salary."

"How do you even know this?"

His partner just grins at him. "I just hear things, Danny. You know how it is. The department is pretty small."

"To you, maybe. As far as I'm concerned the place is goddamned huge."

"That's because you don't know how to fit in. You should really lose the tie."

"I like my ties."

"And that right there is your problem. You lack flexibility. Come on, I'll finish taking his statement, and you can go work that _haole_ charm on Junior, see if you can get him to take some close-ups of the safe in the back. That's the only difference this time: they blew the safe, too. Didn't bother during the other robbery."

"Yeah, okay. I appreciate your very diplomatic attempt to keep me from trampling all over our main witness' delicate sensibilities. I'll be over there, helping to process the scene," Danny says sarcastically, but clamps a friendly hand on Meka's shoulder to show there are no hard feelings. He snaps his rubber gloves for emphasis, and heads off to start documenting the damage.

* * *

Sunday morning finds Danny back at the precinct. It's not the first time that he's spent one of his weekends without Grace at the office, although usually he doesn't spend the whole time there. Sometimes it'll be a few hours, sometimes a whole day. Today, though, he can't think of anything else he wants to be doing if it doesn't involve an overactive eight-year old. It also doesn't help that he lives in Hawaii's tiniest apartment, as far as he can tell. The prices here are outrageous, especially on a cop's salary. He knows Rachel doesn't approve of his one-room apartment with a pull-out sofa, but there's not much he can do about it at this point, and it's not enough for her to take him back to court over custody. He hopes.

Nonetheless, he is aware that his apartment is kind of a shithole, and the idea of spending all day in it isn't exactly appealing. Danny isn't much of a beach guy ―all that sand and salt water just isn't his thing― and that doesn't leave all that many options in this place that don't involve a lot more money than he has to his name. So, the office it is.

He goes into his deserted office, coffee mug in hand, only to stop short once more, jaw slack. All the photographs that went missing are now back, exactly how he left them before they disappeared. He couldn't swear to it, either, but he's almost entirely certain that whoever put them back used the same order of thumbtacks as he did when he first pinned them up, too. He carefully places his coffee mug on his desk, right next to the photocopies of the witness statements that also went AWOL, and rubs a hand over his face.

"Someone is screwing with me," he tells the universe. "They are screwing with me, and when I find them they are going to regret the day they ever thought up this ridiculous prank."

He leaves messages on the voicemail of the I.A. suit running the investigation as well as his Lieutenant, doesn't bother chasing any of the rest of it down, or calling his partner. That can wait until Monday, at the very least. There's still plenty of room on the board, so he adds the pictures of the latest crime scenes, starts jotting down notes on a yellow legal pad, once again just letting his brain play word-association games, hoping something will jump out at him.

Not only is there something hinky about the photographs, he thinks, but this weird twenty-four hour disappearing trick is a huge red flag. He wonders if the pictures were tampered with in any way. On a hunch he pulls down the first set, carefully donning his gloves beforehand, and breaks out his long-unused fingerprinting kit. The days when detectives did all the legwork is long gone, but Danny figures that any self-respecting law enforcement officer should keep his hand in when it comes to this stuff. Besides, Gracie has a lot of fun with it, and he doesn't see any reason to discourage her, no matter what Rachel might have to say on the matter.

It's when he's gone through all of the photos and turned up nothing that the obvious occurs to him. If someone wanted that first set of pictures enough to take them the first time, then it's entirely possible that they'll want the second set too, for reasons best known to themselves. And what better way to find out those reasons than to ask in person? He smirks a little to himself, puts back the pictures where he found them, and begins formulating a plan both simple and elegant in its effectiveness. Or so he hopes, anyway.

He spends the day at his desk, writing up the report on yesterday's crime scene. It's remarkable in its similarity to the first, except for that troubling part about the safe being blown open too. In the last store, the safe was left untouched, making him wonder just what was inside this one that was so important to the burglars. He's going to have to wait for the itemized list of things stolen from the store, though, and obtaining that is Meka's responsibility. He can't hold it against Meka that he wants to spend what little free time he has with his family, after all. A glance at the clock tells him it's stretching on into night, leaving him alone once again with no one but the cleaning staff for company. All the night patrols are out, the desk sergeant is out of view, and there's definitely no one in the detectives' offices right now who doesn't absolutely have to be there, outside of Danny.

Danny stands, stretches, very casually checks his watch, then turns and heads out the door as though he's going to the men's room the same way he did on Friday, leaving his jacket draped over the back of his chair. If he's right, his mysterious visitor will have gotten overconfident after the success of Friday night's escapade, and will end up revealing himself tonight. Or herself, it's not like Danny's sexist or anything. In fact, a leather-wearing female cat burglar would be a really nice change of pace... He shakes himself, forces himself to focus on the job at hand rather than indulge random fantasies about characters who belong more in comic books.

His thoughts turn out to be more prophetic than he thought. Almost as soon as he's ducked out of sight into the hallway, holding his breath, there's a slight scuffling sound inside his office.

He draws his weapon (third time in eight days, he's about to set a damned record) and steps back into the room, hoping that he's not going to end up looking like an idiot for drawing on a janitor, and bellows in his best 'cop-voice.'

"HPD, stop where you are!"

The culprit freezes, hands out to the side, and Danny really isn't sure who's more surprised, him or the intruder.

"You have got to be kidding me!" he says, keeping his sidearm steadily aimed at center mass. "If it isn't my spandex-wearing ally from the alley. Hands up against the wall, buddy!"

The Seal ―and Danny really hopes he's going to learn his real name soon because there is no way in hell that he's going to be calling this perp by that ridiculous name any longer than he has to―doesn't budge.

"This isn't what it looks like!"

"It looks to me like you were coming here to lift the photographs and witness statements from my newest crime scene."

The guy tilts his head a little ruefully. "Okay, so it's pretty much what it looks like. But I was going to put them back, I swear! And this time it wouldn't even have taken as long."

"Up against the wall, don't make me repeat myself!" Danny snaps. "Tampering with those pictures in any way ―and that includes taking them and putting them back, let me assure you― is interfering with a case in progress. That, my friend, is against the law, and so it is my utter pleasure to put your well-sculpted, green spandex-wearing ass under arrest."

"It's not spandex!"

"Why are we even arguing about what kind of fabric your costume is made of?" Danny jerks the barrel of his gun ever so slightly in a motion designed to encourage the suspect to move toward the wall. Instead, the guy turns slowly, arms still out in a non-threatening manner, and grins that stupid, silly grin that Danny saw the first day.

"And you think my ass is well-sculpted?"

"So not the point! You. Wall. Now!"

The guy smirks. "It's a little early in the relationship for that, don't you think?"

"I ―you ―what? No!" Danny sputters. "Where did you get ―that is absolutely not ―I can't believe you would... just do as I say, damn it!"

"How about no?"

Danny tilts his head in acknowledgement, feels his mouth tug down in an expression of doubt. "Yeah, you could refuse, and then I'll shoot you. Normally I hate the paperwork, but at this point, for you? For you I would make an exception."

"I don't think so, Danny."

"How do you know my name?"

"Wasn't hard to find out. It's on your desk, for one thing," The Seal motions to the wooden bar with 'Detective Daniel Williams' carved into it that sits on Danny's desk, and Danny suddenly feels pretty stupid for having missed that one. "Anyway, you and I are on the same side on this case. I just need information that you have."

"You think stealing evidence is going to help me with this case?"

The guy's face twists into what Danny's starting to think of as Aneurysm Face. "Of course not! I think it's going to help me stop my arch-nemesis from enacting his nefarious plans," he says, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Okay, see, no. That, right there? That proves, my friend, that you need help. Serious, professional, psychiatric help. You are running around in a green costume with a mask and a cape, God help me, a cape! And now you're spouting off about arch-nemeses and nefarious plans. Are you even listening to yourself?"

"What's wrong with my cape?"

"Once again, you have seized upon the wrong part of my sentence, Einstein. For the record, capes have been out of style for at least ten years for costumed crime fighters. Or haven't you seen _The Incredibles_?"

"Edna's a crotchety old eccentric," the guy mutters mutinously. "I like my cape, and I've never had any trouble with it. Just because she can't design one with good flow..."

"Again! Again with the crazy," Danny raises his free hand toward the ceiling. "That is a fictional character! You are obviously out of touch with reality, and I am going to do you a favour and take you down to a nice, warm jail cell where a nice person from Social Services is going to come talk to you along with a doctor of psychiatry, and they will set you up with a fantastic regimen of antipsychotic medication which will make you feel a whole lot better. Now, hands up against the wall. Don't make me shoot you."

The guy grins. "You can't shoot me, Danny. Anyway, this was fun, but I gotta go. If I can't get the information I need this way, I'll just find another one. See you around!"

And with that, he's gone. He doesn't vanish, but makes a dive for the window leading onto the darkening street. Caught entirely off-guard, Danny barely has time to squeeze off one shot, which must miss because it doesn't slow the guy down even a little bit. He throws himself at the window, leaning out so far he nearly topples over the ledge and into the street, but The Seal is long gone. How the guy manages to meld into the shadows so well while wearing green spandex is beyond Danny, but the fact remains he's got yet another round of explaining to do for Internal Affairs.

"Just when I thought this week might be better than last week," he groans.

* * *

After that, it's like a switch has been flipped in Danny's head. Whereas before the weird guy in the superhero outfit had barely registered with him as one of those anomalies you encounter in life, now he can't seem to think about much else. It's that, and the case. Monday morning brings yet another burglary, this time of a store specializing in antique dinnerware. This time, the only things that were stolen were silverware (literally only the silver stuff, including platters and goblets and plates and a bunch of things Danny's never even heard of) and all the crystal available in the place, glasses and bowls and one chandelier that, judging by the photo taken for insurance, is far better off disappearing from the face of the earth.

"You'd think our guys would run out of stores to hit," Danny grumbles, picking his way through the evidence.

"It definitely qualifies as a spree, but it's the weirdest spree I've ever seen. Why not just hit all these stores in one night? They probably could have managed it, given the timeframe. If they're not in a hurry, why only wait a day or two in between hits?" Meka is thinking out loud as he picks up what might be a tiny fragment of evidence from behind the counter and drops it into a plastic baggie before sealing it, dating it and signing it.

"I don't know. None of this feels right. They still left behind a ton of valuables, some of which is worth way more than what they took. So what's their goal? Are they looking to melt the silver into bullion and keep it under the radar that way? Most police forces look for stolen gold and not silver, but still..."

Meka shakes his head. "No idea. You get Junior to take pictures of the crowd again?"

"Yeah. I think that there's something hinky about this, something a little more personal than just a jewellery store hit. Won't know until I do some comparing, though."

"Might be the computer guys will have a software that can check the faces for you."

Danny rolls his eyes. "It's a dozen pictures. Sure, I can get them to program it and have it take a week, or I can do it myself, and know right away."

"The computer might catch something you can't."

"Okay, fine, I'll have the computer be my back-up."

"You're a Luddite, you know that?" Meka says amiably.

"Not a Luddite, a traditionalist. I think computers are great, but not the solution to all of the world's problems. In fact, I think they create a lot more problems than they really help to solve."

"You're still bitter about that reformatted hard drive incident, aren't you?"

"I thought we agreed we were never discussing that ever again."

Meka grins and shakes his head. "Whatever you say, partner."

* * *

It isn't often that Danny takes his work home with him, but sometimes looking at things in a different context helps to put them in a different perspective. So he packs up his ever-thickening file on the burglaries into a metal briefcase and tosses it in the back seat of his Camaro. He spends the rest of the evening with a couple of beers ―Longboards as a concession to a little bit of local flavour― poring over the photos Junior took of the crowd. Nothing jumps out at him right away, but he hasn't covered nearly all of his bases yet. He's long since learned to trust the hunches he gets about his case, and his hunch about this one is that the answer is definitely going to be in one of these faces.

He's interrupted about twenty minutes in by the phone ringing, the tell-tale theme from 'Psycho' informing him that it's none other than his darling ex-wife calling him. Still, if she's calling it must mean she's back in town, and if she's back in town then that means that Gracie is back as well, and that is definitely good news.

"Yes, dear!" he barks as a way of greeting, then immediately mellows when Gracie's chirping tone comes over the line. "Oh, hey Monkey. No, I thought it was your Mom on the phone. How did you like your trip?"

He gets a rather garbled but very excited account of the entire trip, mostly about the airplane rides because that's what his eight-year-old daughter appears to find the most exciting about travel. Still, the very-special tennis tournament appears to have been a big hit, and even if Grace hadn't been enthusiastic about tennis before, she definitely is now. Or moreso than before, anyway. There's a lot of indecipherable talk of scores and volleys and backhands, making him wonder if it's not too late to induct her into baseball instead. Still, tennis isn't the worst sport out there. Stan might have tried to get her to play golf, so Danny supposes he should count his blessings. Eventually a careful eye on the clock tells him it's far past Gracie's bedtime.

"I'll come pick you up after school on Friday," he promises at her disappointed tone, trying not to let yet another piece of his heart break off. At this rate, he's not going to have any of it left by the time she's eighteen. "Good night, Monkey, and remember: Danno loves you."

He goes back to his work after that, making sure the alcohol is within easy reach. He's halfway through his third beer, sitting cross-legged on the pull-out bed, when he hears a scraping sound from the kitchen, unmistakably the sound of his window being forcibly shoved open. He doesn't so much as have time to lunge for his service weapon ―in its holster on the side table, just where he told I.A. he always keeps it―when none other than the Green Menace himself is standing in the middle of his apartment.

"Jesus!" Danny says, and doesn't know whether he's relieved or furious or just downright flabbergasted.

"Hiya, Danny!" he says cheerfully.

"What the hell are you doing in the middle of my living room?"

The Seal wrinkles his nose. "You live here?" As Danny starts calculating how fast he can get to his gun, get it out of its holster, aim and shoot, The Seal shakes his head. "Uh-uh, Danny. Trust me, you'll never make it. I am much, much faster than you. Also stronger."

"A little overconfident, aren't we? You don't know what I can do," Danny tries to bluff, but the guy shrugs as though it's of no concern.

"No, not really. I'm a superhero, you know," he says matter-of-factly, as though that statement isn't proof positive of lunacy.

"There's no such thing. There is no such thing as a man who can climb walls like a spider, or leap over tall buildings, or x-ray vision. You're just deluded, and you need help."

The Seal sighs. "Look, I get it, you're skeptical. You're not entirely wrong either. I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, or whatever, but I am different. I'm a lot stronger and a lot faster than pretty much any human being I've encountered. I'm also pretty much immune to most gunfire ―and let me tell you I'm grateful for that because otherwise you would have done some pretty serious damage yesterday."

"As much as I hate to say this, I just missed," Danny says lamely, but he hasn't moved from where he's sitting, feeling a little stupid dressed only in his boxers and undershirt. Then again, he reasons, he shouldn't be the one feeling embarrassed about how he's dressed. At least his outfit doesn't involve spandex and Day-Glo.

The guy clucks his tongue. "We both know that's not true. You're a very good marksman, Danny, and I have the bruise between my shoulder blades to prove it. For the record, it hurts like a son of a bitch."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you with my bullet!" Danny rolls his eyes. "Maybe next time it'll teach you not to break the law. Oh, wait, no it didn't, because here you are!"

"The door was open," The Seal protests.

"It was my kitchen window, and no it was not open. I closed it before bed, I heard you slide it open, ergo you are guilty of breaking and entering!"

"Ergo?"

"Yes, ergo!"

"Look, I came because I want to ask for your help."

"I can't give you the help you need, babe," Danny lifts his palms up in a helpless gesture.

"No," The Seal moves forward until he's almost within touching distance. "I mean with the case. I think my arch-nemesis The Shark might be behind all of the burglaries, but I have no way of proving it. I need to be sure before I can move against him."

Danny claps a hand to his forehead. "Give me strength. The Shark?"

"That's right. I want to look at those photos you had taken, so that I can check and see if anything looks out of place. I've been to the crime scenes, but all the evidence was long gone or contaminated by the cops by the time I got there."

"Hey, hey, cops do not contaminate crime scenes, _you_ contaminate crime scenes! Why the hell were you even there? You realize that could make all of our evidence inadmissible when this goes to trial?"

"You can't take The Shark to trial, it's almost impossible to prove his involvement with anything criminal. He has henchmen to do his dirty work for him," The Seal says earnestly, "which is why it's down to me to take him down. I just need more to go on than what I have."

"Which is what?"

A sheepish shrug. "Pretty much nothing. But I have a feeling it's him."

Danny can't believe he's arguing in the middle of his living room with this guy rather than trying to arrest him, but then again that hasn't really worked out well for him in the past, either. He's all but unarmed in the face of an unknown adversary who hasn't actively tried to harm him yet. Better to try to talk him down, he figures, than to risk escalating the situation.

"See, babe, that is terrible detective work right there," he says, jabbing a finger in the direction of the guy's chest. "You have to look at the evidence first and see where it takes you, not look to the evidence to prove your worthless hunch. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"My hunches are pretty reliable about that sort of thing. So let me take a look already. It can't hurt to have a fresh set of eyes look at the evidence, right?"

And with that the guy simply sits down right next to Danny on his crappy little pull-out, so close that their thighs are brushing, as though it's the most normal thing in the world. From here he can see that the guy is well-built, with dark hair that might curl a bit at the ends if he let it grow out a little more, and hazel eyes that are alive with intelligence and a glint of humour. Danny sighs gustily because, really, how is this even his life? It figures that Hawaii would be not only full of overly sweet tropical fruit and really tiny frogs that croaked so loudly that it really cannot be natural, but also full of crazy people. Crazy people dressed in superhero outfits who think that they are the thin green line standing between ordinary citizenry and the criminal scum of the world. It doesn't help that the guy smells sort of nice, a bit like coconut, and that his thigh is warm and nicely muscled, and damn, it really has been too long since Danny got laid, because there are levels of inappropriate, here. Levels upon levels.

The Seal drops a hand casually on Danny's shoulder in order to better look at the pictures and it takes all of Danny's self-control not to shudder a little at the contact. He makes a mental resolution to start dating more.

"You seriously have no concept of personal space, do you?"

"What, am I making you uncomfortable?"

"Are you –are you kidding me? You. Are. On. My. Bed."

"And?"

"And that is not what normal people do!" Danny flails a little, thoroughly exasperated by now. "I am not in the habit of letting costumed strangers into my home."

"I'm not a stranger."

"Yes, you are. I don't know your name," Danny keeps his tone even, oh-so-reasonable, "which makes you a stranger to me."

There's a moment of silence while the guy considers that, then he smiles again, bright and happy, like he's solved the problem of world hunger that self-same minute. "Well, okay. I'll tell you my name, but you have to promise you won't tell anyone. It's a secret."

"Wait, what?"

"Promise."

"No!"

"You have to promise or I can't tell you," comes the protest. "I trust you, but this is really important."

"Oh my God, how has this become my life? Fine. Fine, I promise not to tell anyone your name, but under two conditions: that promise is null and void if it'll mean saving someone's life, and also if it turns out you're not actually a superhero but actually a criminal and I need to arrest you."

The Seal tilts his head, considering. "Fair enough. My name is Steve."

"Of course it is."

"What?"

"Nothing. Okay, Steve, it's nice to meet you. There's the door, please show yourself out."

"You want me to leave?" The tone is disbelieving.

"Yes!" Danny shouts as emphatically as he can, trying to convince himself as much as this guy that he really means it. "Yes, I want you to leave, you lunatic! Go home, change out of that get-up, and go to bed like a regular person so the rest of us can get our jobs done!"

"You don't mean that, do you, Danno?"

Danny glares, the wind effectively taken out of his sails. "How the hell did you find out that nickname?" he demands, feeling suddenly exposed ―like sitting here in his underwear isn't enough.

"Overheard you talking to your daughter."

"Yeah, well, that's her name for me. You have no right to use it. Now, out!" He points toward the door.

"Fine."

The Seal honest-to-God _pouts_, like his feelings have been hurt or something equally as ridiculous. He slides off the bed and, naturally, rather than use the door like a normal person, heads back into the kitchen.

"Later, Danno!"

And he's gone in the time it takes for the window to open and close again. Danny lets his head drop until his forehead smacks against his hand.

"I ask again," he says to the top of the bedspread. "How is this even my life?"

* * *

Danny doesn't sleep well that night. It probably has a lot to do with knowing that his apartment isn't safe from being broken into by lunatics with nice eyes and questionable taste in cologne. He spends a good amount of time tossing and turning, wakes up half an hour before his alarm is set to go off, tangled in his sheets with the worst hard-on he's had in months. He kicks the sheets to the floor, declares sleep a lost cause, staggers to the bathroom and switches on the shower. It doesn't take long, and since he's by himself no one ever needs to know that he's picturing the mysterious Steve in his mind as he jerks himself roughly to completion, one hand braced against the murky tiles of the shower wall.

It only helps a little bit, in the short run. He finds himself still thinking about Steve as he stops to buy coffee and malasadas on his way to work, which does nothing for his concentration. It's not like this guy is going to help him solve this case, no matter what he tells himself. When he's still about fifteen minutes away from the office, though, his phone rings, playing the intro music to _Lilo & Stitch_.

"Hey, Meka," he brings the phone to his ear. "Aren't you at the office yet?"

There's a put-upon sigh. "You still have that stupid ring tone for me, don't you?"

"Hey, it makes you unique in my book. Besides, Gracie picked it. You wouldn't want to hurt her feelings, would you?"

"Sometimes I think you made that up just to mess with me. Listen, Danny, I got some stuff to do on my own today. I think I might be on to something here. It's a side project nothing to do with the case, but something's popped up and since we don't have anything hot going right now, I figured I'd look into it. I'm already on my way to do a quick check, but I'll be at the office by noon."

"What? Hey, hey, no, that's not how that works. You shouldn't be out there by yourself. Tell me where you are, and I'll come join you."

"No can do, _brah_," Meka laughs. "I mean, I'll tell you where I am if you want, but I.A. wants to talk to you again about the mysterious disappearing-reappearing evidence. So you can't come and play bodyguard."

Danny just barely resists the urge to beat his head against the steering wheel. "Oh my God. I am never going to hear the end of that."

"No, you're really not. Besides, you gotta admit it's weird."

No, Danny thinks glumly, it's not weird at all once you know who was really behind it. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, that probably counts as normal in Steve's books. Steve, whose name keeps dancing around in his mind, the knowledge burning there, bright and incandescent. It takes every ounce of his self-control during his interview with I.A., three hours of nothing but the same question asked seventeen different ways, but he perseveres. No, he doesn't know how anyone could have come into the building undetected (not a lie, he still doesn't really know how Steve managed it); no, he doesn't know who took the papers (also not a lie, it's not like he actually knows the guy beyond a dubious first name and a bad costume) nor what they wanted them for (okay, that one's a lie, but two out of three isn't bad). In the end he leaves with a handshake and the feeling that since the evidence is all present and accounted for, this is all just going to get filed under "fodder for department gossip" for the next ten years. He can live with that.

Meka isn't back by the time he goes to lunch, but since for once there's no new heist Danny takes advantage of an unexpectedly free afternoon to revisit one of the earlier crime scenes, photos in hand. He goes back to the jewellery shop to find Chin Ho Kelly still on security detail there. Kelly gives him a cool, appraising look, but doesn't say much until he approaches, his new blown-up photographs in a brown envelope held in one hand.

"Help you, detective?"

"I certainly hope so," Danny pulls out the photos and spreads them on the counter. "Just doing a little digging. None of this is formal, so you don't have to answer my questions, but you know that already."

"Yes, I do," Kelly says with enough equanimity that Danny's impressed. Most ex-cops are more than a little touchy about it.

"So it's a little early for me to be able to tell who was at all of my crime scenes, because I don't have crowd photographs of the first one, but I do have a few faces that cropped up at both. I was hoping you'd be able to help me narrow down my list a bit."

Kelly shrugs. "Sure. I want these bastards caught as much as you do. Okay, her?" he points to a young woman holding a clutch purse to her chest. "Probably not a person of interest. Name is Kimmy something. She's a regular, comes in with Daddy's credit cards and spends way too much on jewellery she'll wear once or twice. Doesn't mean you can rule her out, but I wouldn't put her at the top of your list."

"Okay, makes sense," Danny nods, ticks off her name on his mental list.

"These two," Kelly points to two of the three men Danny singled out, although the resolution is a bit blurry due to the enhancements, "I don't know. Can't say I ever saw them before, or maybe they just didn't catch my attention. Their body language screams 'rubbernecking,' anyway."

He's good, Danny will give him that. "Go on. What about the last guy?" Danny looks down at the man in the photograph, a good-looking guy with slightly pockmarked skin and sandy brown hair, probably in his early to mid-forties, standing at the back of the crowd of onlookers. That gets a nod.

"I saw him a couple of days ago, just before the burglary. Came in, looked at engagement rings. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but I remember thinking that, whoever he was shopping for, it probably wasn't going to last because he didn't seem all that interested in the rings themselves, just kept looking around like he was taking in the place. He was good, though, if this is your guy, because I never figured him to be casing the place. But it's too much of a coincidence that he'd turn up before and after, and at two different crime scenes."

"All right," Danny slides the pictures back into the envelope. "You've been a big help, thanks." He reaches out, shakes Kelly's hand, notes the expression of surprise. "What, you thought I would treat you like a leper just on general principle?"

That gets him a genuine smile. "You'd be surprised."

Danny sighs. "No, I really wouldn't. I've spent just enough time at HPD to know exactly what it feels like to have no one want to work with you."

"Meka's a good cop. I can't think of another man I'd want more as a partner. He believes I'm innocent."

"Then the odds are good you _are_ innocent. I'd trust his instincts any day."

Kelly glances at the front window of the shop, apparently coming to some sort of internal decision, because he nods a little to himself, then leans forward. "You know, you're not the first person to ask me about those people."

"No?"

Kelly looks at once amused and a little sheepish. "You lose any of your crime scene photos lately, _brah_?"

Danny's getting used to his face making contact with his palm by now. "Don't tell me. It was a guy wearing green spandex."

"He says it's not spandex. Anyway, he saved my life once, so I owe him. I didn't see the harm in telling him what I knew. But I figure I should give you a heads-up that you're not the only person on this case."

"The guy's nuts."

"Maybe not as nuts as you think. Usually he keeps a pretty low profile, doesn't like to draw too much attention to himself. He must think you're pretty special, if you've seen him that close up."

"Lucky me."

That gets him a shrug. "I'm just saying, he can be a good ally if you play your cards right."

"Okay, you are about to destroy any credibility you have," Danny tells him good-naturedly, "so I'm going to leave that there. Here's my card. Anything else turns up, you'll give me a call?"

"Sure thing," Kelly tucks the card carefully into his wallet. "Does that include The Seal?"

"Yeah, why not. If he comes back, let me know so I know to wear extra Kevlar to deal with whatever fallout is going to come from that. God knows one I.A. investigation into this was enough to last me a lifetime. Anyway, thanks for your help. I'd put in a good word for you, but my word means only slightly more than squat, so I probably wouldn't be doing you any favours anyway."

"Yeah, don't sweat it. It's been a long time, I've got something else going on now."

"Well, for what it's worth, thanks again. I owe you a coffee, or something."

"Anytime."

* * *

"Danno, wake up!"

Danny comes out of a dream that he's not entirely sure isn't partially a nightmare, in which The Seal has yet again broken into his apartment and is straddling his thighs while explaining something improbable involving giant cans of tuna being built into a tower and leading up into the volcano as a shortcut across the ocean. He blinks in the semi-darkness, then groans when he realizes that he fell asleep at his desk and that the only light is the thin stream coming in through the window from the street lamp outside.

"I swear to God, if you say anything involving tuna, I will shoot you first, then myself."

"Get up, Danno," Steve's voice makes Danny sit up, suddenly wide-awake. "You need to come right now."

"Why? What's happening?"

"It's your partner. There's been a shooting. Come on, you have to come now or they're not going to let you near any of it."

Danny's already moving, grabbing his jacket and making a futile attempt to straighten his tie. "How do you even get into the building without getting noticed, anyway?"

"Secret entrance. Come on," Steve's grip on his arm is like a vise, propelling him forward to his car. "Get in."

"It's my car."

Steve is already behind the wheel, though, slipping keys into the ignition and revving the engine. Danny doesn't even want to know how he got the keys ―probably out of his pocket while he was sleeping, which is plenty humiliating.

"So are you going to tell me what's going on? What about the shooting?"

"I don't know yet. I heard part of it on the police scanner, heard the name Hanamoa, put two and two together. I figured it might be part of our case, so I decided to get you so we could check it out."

"Okay, no," Danny starts, raising both hands to demonstrate his point. "See, this is not our case, this is my case. The only 'we' here is me and my partner, and you, my friend, are not my partner."

"But you admit I'm your friend?" The grin is back in full force, and not for the first time Danny finds himself wondering what this guy looks like under the mask and the green.

"What? No! Just... shut up and drive, already."

Not altogether surprisingly, Steve drives like a maniac. Takes turns at angles so acute Danny's amazed that he hasn't flipped the car by the time they pull up in front of one of those abandoned warehouses that are ubiquitous in the organized crime world. There are three marked police cars and an ambulance on scene already, lights flashing, yellow tape surrounding a small door to the side, uniformed cops milling about, and Danny spots at least one enterprising reporter lurking, tape recorder at the ready. When he ducks under the yellow tape, he's surprised to find his Lieutenant hurrying toward him.

"Williams! You can't be here," he barks.

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

The look he gets is filled with sympathy, and Danny feels his blood run cold. "I'm so sorry, Danny, I didn't want you to find out like this."

Danny tries unsuccessfully to push past him. "What? Find out what like this? Where's Meka? Oh, God..." he presses both hands to his mouth as the EMTs wheel a gurney slowly toward the ambulance, the figure on it hidden by a black body bag. "Oh, God. Tell me that's not him."

"I'm so sorry. But you can't be here, Danny, let us take care of this."

"Screw that! He's my partner, I can't just stand here!"

The Lieutenant shakes his head. "I know how you feel, but this is procedure, you know that. I have to take you off the whole case."

"You can't do that," Danny's still staring at the gurney, disappearing into the rear of the ambulance. None of it feels real. "Where's the coroner?"

"Been and gone. Go home. Take a couple of days at least, take it easy, and we'll send someone by so you can catch them up on your investigation."

"God," Danny scrubs at his face with one hand, stubble scraping against his palm. "What about Amy? Has anyone told his wife?"

"Not yet, it's too soon. I'll be sending someone over soon, though."

"No," he shakes his head. "Let me do that. I want it to come from a friend. If I can't be of any use here, at least let me do that."

The Lieutenant claps him on the shoulder. "All right. We'll keep you apprised, as much as we can, anyway. You let me know if there's anything we can do for Amy."

"Right."

He turns away, walks dazedly back to his car only to find the keys in the ignition, and no sign at all of his costumed chauffeur. Somehow, at this precise moment he can't bring himself to care about the man's whereabouts. The guy seems to be able to come and go at will anyway, so Danny refuses to worry about him. Right now, he has to go tell the people who, apart from Gracie, are the closest thing he has on this god-forsaken island to family, that they're never going to see their husband and father again.

* * *

Delivering next-of-kin notifications is the very worst part of being a cop, second to nothing. It's the hardest lesson to learn as a rookie cop, and it never seems to get any easier. In fact, Danny is privately of the opinion that the day this part of his job gets easy is the day he turns in his badge and gun, because unnatural death by definition should never be easy. Amy Hanamoa sobs in his arms, curled up on the ratty beige sofa in their living room. Danny's lost count of how many times he's sat on this sofa with Meka before, sharing a beer, watching his little boy Billy playing with Legos on the floor. Billy's a couple of years younger than Gracie, and now his dad is never going to teach him to surf, or how to swing a baseball bat or throw a football. Billy's dad isn't going to be there when the training wheels come off his brand new bicycle, to watch with pride as he pedals away all on his own for the first time, and the thought makes Danny want to punch someone in the face repeatedly until this all somehow gets fixed.

"How did he die?" Amy asks finally, scrubbing at her face with a tissue. Billy is asleep in bed at this hour, and she hasn't made a move to wake him yet.

"I don't know exactly. There was a shooting, but I wasn't there," he says grimly, thinking back to his last conversation with Meka. He can't help but wonder if things might not have gone down differently if Meka had agreed to wait until he was done with I.A., if they'd gone to look up this mysterious lead together, whatever it was about. "They're not telling me much, because we were partners. But I promise, I'll keep an eye out, and whatever I find out, I'll let you know, okay?"

"I don't understand," she says softly, staring at her hands, folded in her lap now, fingers shredding the damp tissue. "I don't understand why anyone would want to kill him. He was such a good man."

"It just means the guys who aren't so good have it out for people like him. Look, I can't make this better, but I promise, we're going to find whoever did this. I can at least give you that."

"What am I going to tell Billy?"

Danny sighs, scrubs at his face. He can almost hear Rachel's voice, screaming at him during one of their worst arguments before the divorce. _'And what am I supposed to tell Grace, Daniel? Tell me that! Tell me what I am supposed to tell our child the day you won't come home from work!'_

"I don't know," he admits. "Tell him the truth, I guess. That his father died, but that he did it so that everyone else would be safe."

Amy makes a derisive sound at the back of her throat. "Is that what you really think? Is that why he died today?"

"It's close enough to the truth. I don't know exactly why he died, but that's why he was a cop. It was his reason for living: you and Billy and making sure Hawaii was safe for you and everyone else living here." Danny squeezes her shoulders.

She wipes away the last of her tears. "You should go, Danny. I have... I have calls I need to make now."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she can't stand the sight of him now. Danny can understand that. It's not like he hasn't had a few thoughts along the lines of _why-Meka-and-not-him_ himself on his way over. Not that he wants to trade places, leave Gracie without a father, but survivor's guilt is a nasty, insidious snake. He squeezes her shoulder one last time.

"I am a phone call away, Amy. You just say the word."

Continued in Part II.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time he gets home he's too wired to sleep, too exhausted to move. He drops onto the sofa that's the only piece of furniture he owns apart from a rickety table and a beat-up dresser, can't even bring himself to pull it out in order to make up the bed. He must have had a good reason for putting it back the way it is, but he can't remember doing it right now. He sits, staring a little blankly at the TV even though it's not switched on, seeing his reflection staring back at him from the shadows, barely registers the sound of the kitchen window sliding open and shut again.

"I'm sorry about your partner," Steve says softly from the doorway. "I didn't realize he was the one who'd been shot, or I wouldn't have let you find out like that."

Danny nods mechanically. "It's fine. If it weren't for you I probably still wouldn't know, and some stranger would be telling Amy her husband is dead right now."

"Still, I would have done it differently, if I'd known."

Danny finds himself wishing he was the type of man to drown his troubles in alcohol. He hasn't bothered to turn around to look at The Seal. "Why are you here, Steve? I'm not exactly in the right frame of mind to play into your elaborate hero fantasies. Not tonight."

"I didn't come for that."

"No? Then what did you come for?" This time he does turn, only to find that the guy is standing off in the shadows in one corner of his living room.

"I came because you shouldn't be alone. Not at a time like this. I know Meka was pretty much your only friend here, and I know what it's like to lose someone like that."

"Okay, well, your sympathy is duly noted," Danny knows he's being churlish, but the last thing he wants is this confusing, irritating man in his living room at three o'clock in the morning exuding sympathy when Danny still can't figure out if he should shoot him or maybe kiss him, and none of those thoughts are especially comforting right now. "But seeing as how we don't know each other, I don't really see the logic behind your reasoning."

"That's where you're wrong. We do know each other. I just figured it was time we knew each other better, that's all."

"Says the guy wearing a mask."

"Do you see a mask, Danno?" Steve asks, and Danny has to bite back a small gasp of surprise as he steps forward out of the shadows.

Probably the most surprising thing about Steve is how perfectly ordinary he looks. Okay, not exactly ordinary. The guy is handsome, clean-cut and very tall, but apart from being drop-dead gorgeous, he could be just any other guy off the street, wearing cargo pants over a pair of what look like military-issue boots and a navy blue polo t-shirt. There's no sign of the slightly manic, endearing smile he usually reserves for Danny, not now. Now he's staring at Danny like he wants to bore a hole right through his skull using only his eyes (and for all Danny knows, that might be his superpower), and all Danny can think of is how bright those eyes are, rimmed with thick lashes. He wonders if it makes him officially a girl if all he wants to do is stare right back into Steve's eyes for the rest of his life.

"Holy crap," he manages after a minute.

"Not what you were expecting?" There's a small smirk accompanying the statement, but this time Steve doesn't quite meet his eyes, as though he's uncomfortable under Danny's scrutiny.

"I don't know what I was expecting. Not this, though. Cargo pants? What happened to the spandex?"

"For the last time, it's not spandex," Steve snaps. "It's a special fibre blend I came up with, okay? More resistant than Kevlar."

"You should patent it and sell it to the police forces. You'd make a mint and save the lives of countless officers in the line of duty," Danny says almost automatically, still staring at the face that's been hidden behind a mask all this time.

"I tried that, but they think it's too expensive to be worth it," Steve has moved forward so that he's standing a bare few inches in front of Danny, so close that if he wanted, Danny could just raise a hand and touch him.

"Why are you here?" Danny repeats, like it might all suddenly make sense, if only he hears it again.

"I told you why."

"I mean, like this," Danny makes a vague up-and-down motion with one hand. "I thought the whole point of the costume was so no one would know who you were."

"Maybe I want _you_ to know who I am, Danno."

"Seriously, don't call me that."

"I don't think you should stay here tonight," Steve leans over, pulls Danny to his feet before he so much as has time to register what's going on, let alone protest the treatment. He smells of the ocean, of brine and salty air, faintly of coconut, and Danny realizes belatedly that he's almost but not quite wrapped up in his arms, shielded from the world. Stranger still, he kind of wants to stay there. "Come with me."

He finds he doesn't really want to resist, not anymore, even though this is probably a spectacularly shitty judgment call on his part. "Where we going?"

"Back to my place."

"Your secret hideout? You got a Batcave?"

"I do, but I think that would be overkill. You need a bed, not a high-tech laboratory," Steve steers him skillfully out through his own front door, and Danny can't even tell if he locks the door behind them. "Maybe some other time I'll show it to you. Come on, get in."

"Why are you driving my car again?"

"It's a nice car, and I didn't drive here."

"That's not what I was asking."

Steve just ignores him, and the scenery rushes by in a blur. For a while there's silence, until the gentle rumble of the Camaro's engine lulls Danny to sleep, eyes drifting shut in spite of his attempts to stay awake. He barely rouses when Steve shakes him by the shoulder and pulls him out of the car and up a short flight of steps into what on first inspection looks like a perfectly normal house. Of course, it probably has a dozen hidden booby traps and twice as many secret doors and tunnels, Danny thinks a little muzzily, but, whatever. It can wait.

"You know, no one in their right mind would be doing what I'm doing right now," he grumbles. "I must be losing it. All that pineapple finally getting to me."

"What's wrong with pineapple?"

"I rest my case," he says with finality as the backs of his knees connect with what feels like a mattress. He doesn't remember going into a bedroom, but here he is. "I'm going to bed in a complete stranger's house and it hasn't occurred to me yet that I should be, I dunno, running away or shooting you, or both."

"I'm not a stranger," Steve repeats firmly. "And I'm not going to try anything, even if your bullets could do anything against me. You're exhausted and I'm not in the habit of taking advantage." He grins wickedly. "I like things fully consensual. Makes it more fun that way."

"Oh my God," Danny groans, unsure whether to be appalled or really turned on. Steve nudges him fully onto the bed and tucks a pillow under his head, and all thoughts of what else they might be doing vanish from his mind.

"We'll talk in the morning," Steve promises. "Go to sleep. It's perfectly safe here, I promise."

And weirdly enough, Danny believes him.

* * *

It's been a very, very long time since Danny has woken up somewhere he wasn't expecting to be. More than ten years, certainly. There's sunlight streaming into the room through half-drawn blinds and the bed is far more comfortable than he remembers his pull-out bed being. A digital clock on the unfamiliar nightstand tells him that it's just past seven o'clock in the morning. Gradually the events of the night before start to come back, leaving a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach which only eases slightly when he sits up and catches sight of Steve, standing in front of the dresser with his back to him. His hair is damp, and he's wearing nothing but a pair of cargo pants, is obviously rummaging for a shirt. In spite of how crappy Danny feels overall, he can't help but admire the well-sculpted muscles of the man's arms and shoulders, the neatly-defined ink of the tattoo at the small of his back and on his arms, feels his dick twitch a little with an interest he can't really deny at this point. As though he can sense he's being watched, Steve turns, pulling a t-shirt over his head, and smiles softly at him.

"I thought you'd sleep longer than that. You were pretty wiped last night."

Danny struggles to a sitting position, wonders just when he managed to shed most of his clothes apart from his boxers. "Yeah, well, strange bed, you know how it goes. This may well qualify as the most surreal morning of my life. Normally if I'm waking up in someone else's bed ―and that isn't exactly par for the course for me either― it's for entirely different reasons.

At that, and this really is his life now, holy hell, Steve ducks his head a little and damn if he doesn't look at Danny coyly right through his lashes, like he's suddenly _shy_ or something. "Yeah, well, I think that might be rushing things a little, don't you?" Danny can't manage much more than a sputter at that, so Steve presses on, still not looking right at him. "Anyway, uh, would you like breakfast? There's coffee."

"That sounds like the best news I've had all week, actually." Danny crawls out of the bed, looking for his clothes, which have somehow ended up neatly folded on a wicker chair in the corner of the room. Looking up, he catches Steve staring at him, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. "What? I got bed hair or something? It just does that, I'll have you know."

"No, I mean, yes, you do, but it's not that. Where'd you get the scar?"

Danny glances down, surprised. He's so used to the nasty-looking thing that he barely gives it any thought these days. "That? Got shot by some punk trying to rob a convenience store back in Jersey. Nearly four years ago, come to think of it."

Danny pulls on his undershirt, threads his arms through the sleeves of the work shirt he was wearing yesterday. He'll shower and change when he gets home, he figures. He's on leave from work anyway, it's not like he has anywhere to rush to.

"That doesn't look like a bullet wound." Steve is suddenly standing right up in his personal space, hand hovering a couple of inches away, as though he wants to reach right through the fabric to wipe away the scar.

"No," Danny explains patiently. "That would be the surgical scar from when they cracked open my chest to prevent me from dying. I don't recommend it, it hurts like a bitch for months afterward."

Steve is still staring at him. "You almost died in the line of duty."

Danny shrugs uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, it's part of the job."

"Not for me, it isn't. God, Danny. How do you do it? Knowing you could die just from any stray bullet?"

"All cops do it, you know. Me? I look into my little girl's eyes, and I know that I'm keeping the world safe for her."

"As easy as that?"

Danny nods. "Easy as that."

There's a long silence, the tension so thick Danny almost wishes he had a knife so that he could test out whether you actually can cut tension with a knife. For a moment he thinks Steve is going to do something impulsive and really insane, but instead he pulls away a little, lets Danny finish getting dressed, and leads him down into a pristine kitchen, where he can smell coffee already brewing. He sits down at the small breakfast counter and lets Steve hand him a cup along with cream and sugar, though he gets the impression from the way things are set up that Steve isn't exactly used to having visitors over. He glances through the adjoining door, sees a small office that looks familiar, although it feels like something is missing from the picture.

"I've seen this place before."

Steve stiffens. "I don't think so."

Danny narrows his eyes, stares at the room. "No, I definitely have, but it was different..." he trails off as he realizes that what's missing from the room are bloodstains and numbered police evidence markers. "I remember. The McGarrett murder. This was Meka's case, before I got here. He was obsessed with it. What the hell are you doing in this house? It's a little on the sick side, don't you think? A little morbid?"

Steve's expression is shuttered. "Not really. This is my house. I inherited it from my father when he died."

"Your father's ―oh. Oh," Danny's brain finally catches up and he realizes what a colossal blunder he's just made. "Jesus, you're Jack McGarrett's son. I'm so sorry, I have a big mouth. I never would... I'm sorry about your father, Steve. Meka told me he was one of the good guys, the best cop he'd ever worked with."

Steve shrugs it off. "Meka's a good man."

"So you knew Meka too?"

"In a manner of speaking. We spoke once, when the case was still active. My father's killer has been in the wind for years, though. No sign of him anywhere, until recently."

Danny's stomach twists unpleasantly. "Let me guess. It was the guy in the photographs from my crime scenes."

Steve nods. "Victor Hesse. He fled the island after he murdered my father, but he works for The Shark ―his right-hand man. If he's back, it's because The Shark is planning something big."

"So you being in that alley, that wasn't a coincidence."

Steve shakes his head. "Meka was a good cop, one of the best. I kept tabs on the case, even when all the leads dried up, then started keeping tabs on you when you became his partner, to make sure no one was trying to interfere with him."

"You checked up on me?" Danny asks incredulously, and Steve nods. "I hate to break it to you, babe, but that's really creepy and invasive."

Steve just shrugs. "I had to know if you were working for The Shark. I'm ninety-nine per cent sure you're not."

"Well, that's reassuring," Danny remarks drily.

"I think the cases are related," Steve says as though Danny hasn't said a word, "I contacted Meka after I recognized Hesse from the photographs. I just didn't think he'd follow up on the lead so fast, or what would happen," his gaze flicks away from Danny, as though he's expecting Danny to maybe lunge to his feet and punch him. In his defense, Danny does come close.

"So what you're saying is, this Hesse is the one who killed my partner? Under orders from The Shark?"

"The same way he killed my parents, yes."

"Parents? As in plural?" Danny's starting to get a headache.

"My father was investigating my mother's death. I always thought it was a car accident, but after he died I found a toolbox full of his notes. He never told anyone in the department about it, worried that there was a leak. The Shark has eyes and ears everywhere."

"This Shark got a name at least? I'm finding it hard to muster much fear or respect or whatever for a giant fish."

Steve nods, goes into the office, takes out a manila envelope and brings it back to the kitchen. He pulls a couple of grainy photographs of an Asian man dressed in a really unfortunate-looking white suit and pushes them towards Danny. "I've never seen him in person, but I believe this is the man I've been up against these past few years. His name is Wo Fat."

Danny stares at the picture, then whistles quietly. "You sure know how to pick 'em, my friend. You sure you don't want to try the Sith Emperor instead? Might be easier to take down."

"Don't be ridiculous, Danno, there's no such thing. That's a fictional character."

Danny drains his cup of coffee and Steve doesn't wait to be asked before refilling it. "So you're telling me that the guy who is reportedly the head of the Yakuza here in Hawaii is also ―and I cannot stress how insane this sounds― a super-villain who happens to be your arch-nemesis."

"I don't see why that sounds so insane."

"Normal people don't have arch-nemeses, Steven."

The corner of Steve's mouth twitches into something almost resembling a smile. "I thought you already decided I wasn't normal."

Danny throws up his hands in surrender. "That's not what I meant! How come no one else knows about this epic battle of good and evil you've got going on, then?"

Steve actually rolls his eyes. "Well, it wouldn't be much of a secret if everyone knew about it, would it? I mean, he wants his identity kept a secret as much as I do. Otherwise his whole operation would be blown and he'd never get to put his master plan into action."

"Master plan?"

"Well, world domination, of course."

Danny groans. "I was really afraid you'd say that."

* * *

Danny has never been involved in a fully-fledged conspiracy before, and it's surprisingly stressful, he finds. There's a whole world out there that he never suspected even existed, full of people with extra abilities and secret identities and a whole universe of power politics being played behind the scenes that, if he's honest with himself, he never ever wanted to know about. For a few days, at least, he finds himself avoiding all contact with Steve, who, now that they're on familiar terms, has at least stopped dropping in like a bird of ill omen and now uses the telephone like a regular human. He doesn't bother answering any of the calls, though, unwilling to deal with whatever he's going to find on the other end of the line, and refuses to dwell to long on how much he kind of misses the lunatic already, on how comfortable it felt, spending that one morning together.

Time passes in a mass of days blending into each other. Meka's funeral goes by in a blur of trumpet music and ceremonial gunfire, and he watches as Amy quietly accepts the carefully-folded flag that up until a few minutes ago was draped over Meka's coffin. Billy is standing next to her, one hand clutching a fold of her skirt so hard Danny thinks the fabric might rip. Billy's too young to really understand what's happening, but Danny is pretty sure he's understood that his father is never coming back. After the funeral he goes home and for the first time in his life, gets properly drunk as a direct result of his work, crawls under the blanket on his bed and promptly passes out. When he awakens, he finds a pitcher of water and an extra-large bottle of Tylenol next to his bed that he doesn't remember putting there the night before.

At the office, he suddenly finds he's become _persona non grata_. Conversations stop when he approaches, groups disperse rather than talk to him. His desk is entirely deserted, whereas before at least sometimes people would stop by sometimes to chat with Meka. Danny hadn't realized before just how much he relied on Meka to be the social lubricant between him and the other officers. Now, though, his desk has become a ghost town, populated by tumbleweeds and his aging case files. The jewellery store robberies have been taken away and reassigned, and everyone is carefully not giving him any sort of useful updates on the investigation into Meka's murder.

So Danny does whatever any other cop in his position would do: he cheats. He doesn't have much by way of allies within the department, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have other resources. The one cop who still talks to him is Kono, which comes as something of a surprise even to him. She sidles up to his desk one day, holding a small stack of photocopies.

"Thought you might like to see these," she says casually, dropping the stack on his desk.

He picks up the papers. "This is Meka's autopsy report," he says, eyebrows making a break for his hairline. "Dare I ask?"

"I made friends with Max. He doesn't like people, but he can appreciate someone who'll tune his piano without insisting on small talk."

"Please tell me that's not a euphemism."

Kono snorts and punches his arm, hard. "Ew, what do you take me for? No, his actual piano, you sexist jerk. Don't make me go to the Lieutenant and force him to sign you up for sensitivity training."

Danny holds up both hands in a clear gesture of surrender. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry! That didn't come out right at all, okay? It's just... you know what? There is no good way for me to finish that sentence. I didn't mean to imply anything about you or your, uh, methods of obtaining information. Which, thank you, by the way."

"You're welcome."

He starts flipping through the pages. "So, can I ask why you're speaking to the leper? This sort of thing is contagious, you know."

She shrugs. "I don't care. You were good to my cousin, and anyone who does good by my family deserves something from me in return."

"Your cousin?"

"Chin Ho Kelly."

"I didn't realize the connection. Next time remind me to check more carefully. So, you think your cousin's innocent?"

"Absolutely. And one day, I'm going to prove it."

Danny can respect that. "You ever need help with that, Kono, you just let me know. At the very least, he deserves a fair shake and not just the bum's rush that he got here."

She smiles, then, bright and sunny. "I knew there was a reason I liked you! Meka had good instincts," she says, sobering a bit. "He kept insisting you were one of the best cops we had, that the other detectives were stupid to shut you out. I bet you anything you're going to prove him right, sooner rather than later. Hope you find what you're looking for in there, Danny."

"I hope so too."

* * *

The case dries up. It doesn't help that Danny's not allowed to pursue it officially, of course, but it becomes obvious after a while that the detectives assigned to the case aren't getting anywhere. Whether it's because they're dragging their feet or being deliberately stonewalled is anyone's guess, but either way it makes Danny furious. Anywhere else, he thinks, and a cop's death would have the entire department crawling over it in order to get the cop-killer off the streets, preferably with the stuffing kicked out of him. Here? It's like some sort of silent order has been passed along without Danny's knowledge to ignore this travesty. Meka gave twelve years of his life to the force, and apparently all he's getting in return is a nice funeral and a bunch of cops spitting on his sacrifice.

Danny Williams, however, is not a detective for nothing. If no one else is going to get justice for his partner, then he's damned well going to get it himself. It's easy enough to start digging on his own now that he has a few names to go along with the investigation. There's a new transfer in from the FBI, a pretty girl who's a bit on the nerdy side by the name of Jenna Kaye. Given her _haole_ status she and Danny commiserated early on and since then she's proven more than a little willing to bend the occasional rule to help him. It turns out also that the name Wo Fat isn't unknown to her –the FBI has him on a couple of watch lists as it happens– and she's happy to slip him information under the table in exchange for part of the care packages his mother still sends from New Jersey on a semi-regular basis. Danny can't blame her: there are few people who can resist his mother's baking, even after a couple of days of express travel.

With her help and the occasional nudge from Kono, after a couple of weeks he's reasonably certain that he can come up with some good intel on the whereabouts of Victor Hesse, who right now is at the top of his suspect list. Or, technically, he supposes Hesse is more of a 'person of interest' since there's no evidence yet that he was the one who actually pulled the trigger. Ballistics are a match between Meka's death and that of Jack McGarrett, though, and that by itself is too big to be a coincidence. Danny keeps a copy of that report in his apartment along with back-ups of everything else. He's not by nature a paranoid man, but when the original ballistics report goes missing, it's just one more coincidence in a long line of coincidences that appear to be building a giant brick wall between him and the truth.

The best lead he gets takes him to a safehouse down by the docks where he sets up an unofficial surveillance of sorts during his time off. Kono helps as best she can, but she's still a rookie and her time isn't really her own. Not to mention that he's not really willing to jeopardize her career any more than he already is. She's just starting out, it would be unfair to saddle her with even more trouble than her cousin's reputation has already brought her. It's frustrating in the extreme, but it's better than nothing, he reasons. He does manage to build a decent portfolio of pictures during his stakeouts, carefully annotated with dates and times. It doesn't come as a complete surprise, therefore, when he gets called into his Lieutenant's office. The Lieutenant gestures him to a chair, tight-lipped with disapproval, which Danny refuses, standing with both hands gripping the back of the chair instead.

"I don't suppose I have to tell you why you're here?"

Danny arranges his face into the blandest expression he can muster. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir."

The Lieutenant sighs. "Okay, Williams, go ahead and play dumb. Here's how this is going to works. Effective immediately, you are on paid sick leave. You will come into the office only for previously scheduled appointments with the psychologist, for necessary meetings with HR, or if I call you in. You will cease your communications with Jenna Kaye and with Officer Kalakaua except on a strictly social basis and you will not, under any circumstances, discuss the investigation into Detective Hanamoa's death with them or with any other member of HPD. You will also, effective immediately, cease and desist your visits to the district that appears to have become your favourite haunt of late. I will not have this department be liable for a case of police harassment because you don't know how to let something go!" he yells the last few words, jabbing a finger at Danny for emphasis. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal. I guess I'm never going to get used to how things work here. Back in Jersey, a cop dies? No one goes home until the killer's found." He doesn't bother to keep the accusation out of his tone.

"Damn it, Williams," the Lieutenant blows out a breath. "You are one of my best detectives. Don't screw up your career over this. We all want Meka's killer brought to justice. Why don't you trust the rest of us to do our jobs, all right? Go home. Have a beer. Watch the game. See your kid. Take advantage of the down time. And for heaven's sake, don't make me have to fire you."

* * *

Danny's seeing red by the time he gets out of HPD, filled with impotent rage. He's got a stack of evidence that's never going to see the light of day, every path a dead end as far as the eye can see. He drops the box of files from his car on the floor of his apartment, slams the door shut with a vicious kick, because there's nowhere else to vent his frustration.

"Take it easy, Danno," an amused voice comes from the gloom of his apartment. "You'll lose your safety deposit on this dump if you keep on that way."

Danny jumps about six feet, slumps against the door, heart hammering at his ribcage. "Jesus, Steve, warn a guy!"

"Well, I would have called, but you never answer your phone when I do. You want to tell me what that's about?" Steve, Danny notes, is back in costume, complete with mask and cape.

Danny wipes a hand over his face, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal. "Yeah… this isn't a good time."

Steve is yet another complication Danny doesn't need in his life. It's not that he doesn't like the guy ―that's precisely the problem. The last thing he needs is a six-foot hazel-eyed distraction from his self-imposed mission of finding Meka's killer and bringing him to justice. It's bad enough Steve has invaded all of his thoughts, both waking and dreaming, without Danny having to actually speak to him directly. So, yeah, maybe Danny's been avoiding the whole situation in the vain hope that all his presumably unrequited feelings will go away on their own.

"You're avoiding me." Steve steps forward until they're mere inches from each other. He does a really good job of looming, Danny thinks, swallowing hard and trying resolutely not to imagine what it would be like if Steve just pinned him against the wall and had his way with him, right then and there. "And when would be a good time, Danny?"

"I don't know. How about when I haven't just been put on paid leave for trying to do the right thing?"

Steve's face scrunches up into an expression that Danny thinks is meant to be commiserating. "Damn. I'm sorry."

Danny extricates himself from being in such dangerously close proximity to Steve, makes a show of picking up his mail from where it's lying on the floor by the mail slot. "Yeah, well, me too. Hey, at least now I'll have the chance to catch up on all this riveting junk mail that people insist on sending me," he says bitterly, tossing flyer after flyer onto the small table by the door until he comes to a manila envelope with his name printed on it. "The hell?"

"No postage," Steve points out, and Danny's heart skips a beat for no reason he can determine, except that his instincts are all screaming _danger!_ at him.

The envelope is unsealed, and contains a single eight-and-a-half-by-eleven glossy colour photograph. Danny pulls it out completely from the envelope, stares at it, isn't sure that he's not going to throw up right then and there. Steve catches him by the shoulders when his knees threaten to give way.

"Whoa, easy now. Hey Danny, come on, talk to me," he shakes him a little. "What is it?"

Wordlessly Danny just flips the photograph around, shows it to him. It's a picture of Grace, all smiles, wearing her pink backpack, trotting up the stairs to her school, surrounded by her friends. Her expression is bright and happy, trusting, her uniform crisp and neatly-pressed, socks pulled up to her knees. The picture was obviously taken from a distance with a telescopic lens, the threat as clear as if it had been written in blood on the paper: stay away, or else.

"Bastards," Steve says feelingly, but Danny's already got his phone open, dialling.

"I need to speak to Gracie," he says when Rachel answers, not even bothering with so much as a hello. To her credit, Rachel doesn't call him on it ―this isn't the first time he'll have called like this, and it's the one thing she never resented― and he listens to the soft click of her shoes against the floor as she brings the cordless phone to Grace's room.

Grace's voice is sleepy, making him realize just how late it is, but already he can feel the tension draining from his muscles, just knowing she's alive and breathing. "Danno?"

"Hey Monkey," he forces himself not to let his panic creep into his voice. "I'm sorry I woke you up. I just wanted to see how you were."

There's a pause. "Did some kids get hurt?"

"What?"

"You always call when bad things happen to kids. Are they okay?"

A lump forms in his throat. Damn, but his baby girl is perceptive. "No, sweetheart, nothing happened to any kids. I was just worried for a while, but everything's fine, I promise."

"Okay, I'm glad. You're always sad when that happens, and I don't want you to be sad."

Danny swallows hard. "You go back to sleep, baby. Give your mom the phone?"

"Okay. Good night, Danno!"

"Good night, Monkey," he says, but Rachel's already on the line. "I don't want to freak you out, but I think for the next few days it should be you or me picking her up from school. No one else, okay? No drivers."

"Daniel, what's happening?" Rachel asks quietly, obviously trying not to alarm Grace.

"Nothing official. Just... keep her close for a few days, okay? Trust me."

"All right. You'll tell me if there's anything." It's not a request.

"Of course. Thank you, Rach."

"You don't have to thank me."

"I'm going to kill them," Danny says softly as he hangs up, feeling his blood start to flow again for the first time since he opened the envelope. His stomach churns unpleasantly "Those bastards threatened my little girl, Steve. I'm going rip them apart, limb by limb. I swear, they so much as come within shouting distance of her..."

Steve steps toward him, puts his hands on his arms. "Hey, it's okay. We'll get them long before that ever happens, okay? You hear me? We'll keep her safe, you and me."

He still thinks he might be sick, but Steve's got both hands on his biceps, gripping him hard, and the feeling of those fingers digging into his arms keeps him grounded, keeps him from flying apart right then and there. Steve pulls him closer, strong arms circling his shoulders, and he's not really sure whether Steve leans down or he reaches up, but the next thing he knows their lips have met and he's kissing Steve as though his life depends on it.

* * *

Danny's mind reels. He can feel Steve's tongue against his, a little curious, a little insistent and oddly diffident for all that, as though Steve expects to be rebuffed at any moment. Danny deepens the kiss, feels Steve's hands clenching fistfuls of his shirt, as though it's taking all of Steve's self-control not to just lay him out right there on the floor. He pulls back, a little breathless, puts a hand out to steady himself.

"Danny, are you –are we?"

He grins, walks them back toward the bed, and Steve lets himself be steered, his expression bemused and not a little pleased. It's a heady feeling, shoving around a man who's got at least six inches on him, maybe more (definitely more, but Danny's not going to start counting now, it'll just depress him), knowing that he's got all the power here because Steve is willing to give it to him. Steve stumbles a little when the backs of his knees meet Danny's sofa bed, and it's only Danny's grip on his shirt that keeps him from falling backward. Danny lets him down slowly, their lips still locked, pushes him backward and climbs over until he's straddling Steve's thighs, more than a little gratified by the effect he's having on him. Steve is hard against Danny's thigh, and the spandex should make this ridiculous except that somehow it just makes it even hotter, along with the way he's kissing Danny like he's trying to make him come just with the combined touches of their tongues.

"Come on, babe," Danny murmurs, moving along Steve's jaw to bite at his neck just below the ear, enjoying the way Steve jerks under him with a quiet gasp.

He tugs at Steve's mask, fumbling with clumsy fingers to unfasten it behind Steve's head. For a moment he thinks Steve is going to resist, pull away even, but after a moment he goes still and even reaches up to help Danny with the knot.

"Don't get me wrong, babe," Danny says into his ear, breath hot against Steve's skin, savouring the way it makes Steve shudder. "The mask is mysterious and all, which is kind of hot, but I want to be able to look into your eyes."

Steve huffs a laugh, does something with his hips that almost makes Danny cream his shorts like a teenager right then and there. "I knew you were a romantic."

"See how romantic you feel when I still can't get you out of this ridiculous spandex thing."

"For the last time: It's. Not. Spandex!" Steve growls, and Danny decides he really must be a Ninja or something, because the next thing he knows Steve has flipped him onto his back without his quite realizing how he got there. More importantly, the costume has vanished, leaving well over six feet of very naked Seal sitting on his hips and plunging his tongue into Danny's mouth like it's his last day on earth and this is the very last thing he's ever going to taste.

As fast as he was with his own costume, Steve takes his time peeling away layer after layer of Danny's clothes, popping one button after the other using nothing except his teeth, and it might very well be the hottest thing Danny's ever seen. Steve trails kisses and licks and nips down his chest, works open the buttons of his fly and tugs his slacks free swiftly and smoothly, and Danny almost sobs with relief when Steve removes his boxers and the last of the confining material is gone. He's hard and straining now, pre-come leaking freely from the slit, and he can't bite back a moan when Steve carefully applies his tongue to the head of his cock, licking delicately around the crown.

"Steve..." he manages, but whatever else he was going to say is lost when Steve swallows him down entirely and without hesitation, like this is what he's been waiting for this whole time. Within a few seconds Danny is writhing, fists clenched around handfuls of his bedsheets in his struggle not to simply thrust up into the perfect, wet heat of Steve's mouth. He has just enough presence of mind left to know that that would be unconscionably rude, and while it's not exactly something he would discuss with his mother, the good woman raised him better than to be quite that selfish in the sack. Then Steve's tongue curls just the right way, and all of Danny's thought processes go right through the window. He barely has the wherewithal to utter a strangled warning before he's coming, but it seems like enough, because Steve pulls off at the very last moment, finishing him with an expert twist of one hand.

For a few minutes Danny's pretty sure he's never going to remember how to speak ever again, and that's fine by him. When he starts coming back to himself he realizes Steve's been moving around the room on his own and has come back, all without his noticing. When he's sure he has Danny's attention he waggles a familiar-looking foil packet at him, his expression comically unsure.

"Uh. Can I?"

Danny throws his head back with a chuckle, still feeling boneless and sated from his orgasm. "Yes, Steven, you may," he says, adding a flourish with his right hand. "Seriously, you have to ask? Get over here, you giant goof."

Steve grins, his cheeks flushing crimson with embarrassment, and it really shouldn't be that cute, except that it's positively goddamn adorable, and all that Danny wants right now is for Steve to get on with it and screw him until he can't see straight. For a second Steve is all thumbs, trying to open up the condom packet, which is kind of reassuring —even Ninjas get nervous sometimes, it seems— and Danny ends up plucking it from his hands and putting it on for him, which gets an appreciative roll of Steve's hips. Steve didn't have any trouble locating the lube Danny keeps in the top drawer of his night table, and Danny licks his lips involuntary as he watches him spread it liberally over his fingers and hand.

"Ready?" Steve lays a hand, warm and steadying on his hip.

"God, yes," Danny tugs at his wrist, urging him on. "C'mon, Steve."

For a split-second he almost regrets the decision. The lube is cold, and it's been a very long time since he's had sex with anyone, let alone another guy, and he'd forgotten how very cold and very uncomfortable this part of it could be, even if he's already loose and relaxed from before. Steve is surprisingly gentle, though, and stops immediately when he feels Danny tense up, rubs circles on his hips with the thumb of his other hand.

"Easy, Danny," he murmurs. "Relax, okay? I got you, I promise..."

Danny pulls in a shuddering breath, closes his eyes, forces himself to relax, his muscles to unclench, and Steve eases his finger in just past the first knuckle, twisting a little and rubbing, letting the lube warm to body temperature and letting Danny adjust, little by little. After a moment the intrusion becomes less uncomfortable, starts teetering just on the edge of being pleasurable again, and Danny lets out a quiet moan, shifts his hips to get a little more friction, which Steve takes as an invitation to add another finger. Danny jerks, hips almost coming off the bed, but Steve keeps his hand splayed over his hip, pinning him in place, keeps working his fingers in short thrusts, crooks them until he finds Danny's prostate.

"Oh God," Danny moans louder this time, as Steve hits the same spot over and over again until he's seeing stars.

By the time Steve's ready, positioned above him on arms shaking from the strain of holding himself up, Danny's hard and leaking again, breathing raggedly. Steve is looking at him expectantly, eyes questioning, and Danny nods, tacitly giving permission. His eyes slam shut as he feels Steve's cock nudge at him, then slowly thrust in. He feels Steve pause, letting him adjust, realizes he's been holding his breath so long that he feels a little light-headed and his chest actually hurts. He lets out a careful breath, moves his hands until he's clasping Steve's wrists where he's holding onto Danny's hips.

"Go on," he urges him. "Move. Please."

He can still feel Steve's hesitation, cants his hips in order to encourage him, sets up a slow rhythm that's got to be even more frustrating for Steve than for him. Finally Steve seems to get with the program, moving forward to meet each of Danny's thrusts with one of his own, then to Danny's surprise he reaches down and simply hauls Danny up into his lap without so much as breaking his stride, as though this is something he does all the time. Danny's curse of surprise is immediately muffled by the talented application of Steve's mouth, kissing him for all he's worth even as he urges him on with short, sharp thrusts.

After that it's like a switch has been thrown. There's no question now of going slowly or gently, and Steve is all hands and lips and tongue, making Danny wonder dimly just how many arms he has in order to be able to touch him in so many places at once in ways that make him feel like his skin is being set on fire. He's pretty sure he's babbling, has no idea what sort of nonsense is coming out of his mouth, but he can't even begin to care, just so long as Steve doesn't stop what he's doing. It's a hot and fast and frantic few moments of breathing each other's air, of not being sure where he ends and Steve begins, until Steve jerks convulsively under him and comes with a hoarse yell while Danny keeps riding him through the aftershocks. Steve rests his forehead onto Danny's shoulder, retaining enough presence of mind to bring his hand between them and grasp Danny's dick, tipping him right over the edge for the second time with a few well-timed jerks.

Still breathing hard, Danny lets Steve ease them both back onto the bed, pulling out carefully and rolling off the bed to dispose of the condom. Danny decides he's too tired to move, even though Steve left him lying spattered in his own come, and so he's doubly pleased when Steve reappears almost like magic a moment later with a wet washcloth and carefully wipes him down.

"A regular gentleman," he murmurs, and Steve laughs, collapsing onto the bed next to him, making the springs groan. The washcloth falls with a wet splatting sound to the floor, but Danny can't bring himself to care.

Steve settles closer, flings an arm over his waist. "I like to get up early, just so you know."

"Should have known you were a cuddler," Danny answers instead, shifting so that they fit together better. "Get up at whatever time you want, so long as you don't expect me to get up at the same time. And don't hog the covers."

"Next time, we're doing this at my place. Your sofa-bed is really uncomfortable."

Danny snorts. "Cocky. Assuming there's going to be a next time."

Steve just pulls him even closer, already halfway asleep, and Danny sees no reason not to follow his example for once.

* * *

The lack of leads in the case is quite possibly the most frustrating thing Danny has ever had to deal with in his entire life, possibly up to and including his acrimonious and messy divorce. Not that Danny is unofficially investigating the case while he's on forced leave or anything, because that would go against regulations and everything he's been taught about being a good cop. So he's definitely not investigating on his own. Not to mention that it's like fulfilling every single bad TV cop cliché that Danny has grown to loathe over the years. He doesn't watch television anymore except for football and baseball, because every police procedural that the local stations inflict on him is worse than the last, and he ends up throwing a sofa cushion at the screen in frustration.

"You realize it's fiction, right Danny?" Steve asks one night when he's come over, ostensibly to discuss the case that Danny is totally not investigating.

Of course, they ended up tangled in each other on Danny's admittedly uncomfortable sofa-bed rather than really discussing anything, but Danny can't bring himself to mind. Right now, though, Steve is hunkered over the tiny table that Danny sometimes uses when he brings home work, while Danny mutters mutinously under his breath about David Caruso and the whole _CSI: Miami_ team's tendency to wear white pant suits to extraordinarily grimy crime scenes.

He switches off the television in disgust. "I know, but you'd think these writers would at least make a minimal effort at realism. Next thing you know they'll be taking photographs of the crime scenes with their damned iPhones instead of letting the forensics guys do it with their professional equipment."

"You don't take crime scene photos with your iPhone?"

"Of course not! You can't expect―" Danny sputters to a stop the minute he realizes, slightly too late, that Steve was trying to get a rise out of him. "Oh, shut up. What do you know about proper procedure anyway? Your idea of reading someone their rights is to swoop out of the night, tie them up and then string them up from a lamp post."

"That was one time!" Steve protests. "And he had it coming, anyway."

"And that right there is why you should never get officially involve with law enforcement. Whether or not a perp 'has it coming' has nothing to do with how a good police officer conducts himself, am I clear?"

"Crystal. Speaking of which, I got you something."

Danny glances up, surprised. "You did? Is it something that's going to blow up my apartment?"

Steve makes Kicked Puppy Face, which never fails to make Danny feel guilty about every single mean thing he's said to everyone for his whole entire life. "No, it's a present. And it was one grenade and it never even came close to your apartment."

"No, you just kept it in the trunk of my car without telling me. While I'm on forced leave from my job, which could result in me losing my badge forever."

"You're forgetting the part where I got you a present," Steve thrusts a small blue box at him, his expression hopeful.

"You're not going to propose, are you?" Danny takes the box, eyeing him askance. Steve rolls his eyes, so he very carefully pops open the box, revealing a sleek little silver tie pin. It's surprisingly tasteful and unostentatious. Danny was sure that Steve's taste in jewellery would be just as eye-searing as his costume choices. "I thought you didn't approve of my ties."

"They're not appropriate island wear. You just look out of place with a shirt and tie."

"Well, excuse me for wanting to look like a professional."

"A professional what?"

"Ha-ha. Funny. You got me a tie pin, so that automatically invalidates everything you've ever said about my ties."

"Look, I just wanted you to have something useful, okay? So long as you're wearing really impractical clothing, it may as well serve some purpose. Check it out," Steve reaches for the tie pin, grinning in a way that immediately has Danny extremely worried. "It's hollow, so if you press this little indentation at the tip of the pin, it actually serves as a miniature knife."

"You gave me a knife disguised as a tie pin." Danny gives Steve a flat look.

"Well, yeah. You never know when it'll come in handy."

"You, my friend, need serious help. Remind me to give you the card of a very good therapist I know."

Steve grins, drops onto the sofa and makes an elaborate show of crossing his legs and resting his feet on the coffee table ―which he knows drives Danny nuts, damn him. "I have better things to do with my time, Danno."

Danny arches an eyebrow at him. "Oh yeah? Like what."

Steve smirks. "Come here, and I'll show you."

Danny heaves a sigh, can't quite help the smile that spreads over his face, and decides that, just this once, he's going to let himself get distracted.

* * *

It's Kono and Chin Ho Kelly who provide an unexpected break in the case. After spending nearly three days in Danny's company, Steve abruptly disappears, with no explanation whatsoever save that he's 'looking into something.' The only reason Danny knows not to suspect foul play is that he occasionally gets cryptic text messages which he's pretty sure Steve thinks are perfectly obvious.

_So are you in actual danger of being killed right at this moment?_ He texts back at one point, thoroughly exasperated.

The reply is equally exasperating. _No, why?_

_Never mind._

The whole process makes his head ache, and truth be told he's going a little stir-crazy in his tiny apartment with nothing to take his mind off the fact that Meka's killer is still out there. Rachel has whisked Grace off on an impromptu vacation, and while Danny misses his little girl like a limb that's been chopped off, he can't bring himself to resent her absence this time. Not when he knows it's the only thing keeping her safe from enemies who seem perennially out of his reach.

So he's grateful when his cell phone rings, and Kono's cheerful tones come over the line. "Hi Danny! So, I was wondering, you been jewellery shopping lately?"

He blinks. "Uh, no. Why would I be jewellery shopping?"

"Oh, you know, you never know what could happen," Kono says. "You meet all sorts of interesting people, with all sorts of interesting things to say. I hear that there are some interesting sales going on, too. So, you know, if you were looking for a watch, now would be a pretty good time to check them out. You catch my drift, _brah_?"

"You're about as subtle as a speeding freight train," Danny assures her. "A new watch, you say?"

"Or earrings, if that's more your thing. I like diamonds, for the record. Silver backing. Definitely earrings, it's always a safe bet. "

"Duly noted," Danny keeps shaking his head long after he's hung up the phone.

Chin Ho Kelly doesn't look in the least bit surprised when Danny shows up at the store. "What can I do for you, Detective?"

Danny leans on the counter. "You may as well call me Danny. At the rate I'm going I won't have a badge this time next week. Doesn't anyone else work in this place? I never seem to see anyone else here."

Chin shrugs and smiles in a way that suggests he is at one with the ways of the universe and embraced all its inexplicable weirdness. "The other employees are feeling a little nervous about being here, so the owner asked me to fill in."

"Aren't you security?"

"Yup. And now I get commissions, too. So, are you looking for anything in particular?"

"Apparently I'm supposed to get diamond earrings for a good friend. You got any recommendations?"

That gets him a slight raise of Chin's eyebrow, which is quite possibly the first time Danny has seen him emote anything beyond 'enigmatic.' "Well, our own inventory is pretty depleted since the robbery, but I have an address for you. I think you'll find what you're looking for there, if you hurry. It turns out that particular kind of jewellery is in demand."

"Lots of weddings all of a sudden?"

Chin is busy carefully printing the address on a piece of paper, and so Danny can't see his expression. "A mutual friend of ours told me there are some very practical applications for it, actually, although I have to say it's nothing I'd ever heard of before. You should get going, if you don't want to miss the boat on this. I hear there's an important shipping deadline coming up."

Danny glances at the address, which predictably enough is by the docks. "Thanks Chin, I owe you one. Or is it two now?"

"Might be three, but I'll let it go for two. Try to keep our mutual friend out of trouble, all right? You and Kono are the only ones who know about this address, because if I leave it up to him he'll go in firing every cannon he has at his disposal and probably get himself killed, and God help me but I like the crazy man and I'd hate it if he met an untimely end."

"Wow. I think that's the most I've heard you say in all the times we've spoken put together."

"What can I say? I like to practice economy in all things. You should get going, Danny."

"Right," Danny reaches across the counter to shake Chin's hand. "Again, thank you."

"Anytime, _brah_."

* * *

The address turns out to be a warehouse less than a quarter of a mile from where Meka was murdered. Danny isn't much of one for hunches ―he doesn't like anything that can't be backed up by good old-fashioned police work― but his gut tells him that if he digs into the paperwork on all these warehouses, he's going to find some surprising similarities. Danny has always been a homicide detective, but he wonders if it might not be worth asking for a transfer to Organized Crime. It'll get him out from the disapproving stares of the rest of his precinct, and he gets the feeling that it might prove a lot more rewarding in the long run. Goodness knows that Hawaii seems to be rife with corruption at many levels, and there's something viscerally satisfying about the idea of cleaning up the place that's made his life miserable for the last year.

The warehouse yard is deserted as he makes his way to the side door, and a quick look around reveals no visible security camera. The door is locked, but since Danny's here unofficially he doesn't feel too bad about picking the lock and letting himself in. Lock picking isn't exactly a usual skill for a police officer to have, but Danny's found it useful enough in the past. He just doesn't advertise it much, lest it give the wrong idea to his colleagues. Forty-five seconds later and he's slipping through the door,wishing it wouldn't creak quite so much on its hinges, and finds himself in a small office filled with what look like rolls of blueprints. He pauses in order to unroll one of the blueprints, stares at it long enough to realize that he has no idea what it is. He's not exactly an engineer or anything, but he's never seen anything like this. It looks maybe a little like a cannon, but much, much bigger —how big he can't really tell, which is a little annoying. Finally he gives up on deciphering it, figuring that they can always get experts to look at it later, when he brings all of the wrath of HPD down on this place, along with the requisite warrants, of course. Right now, he tells himself as he eases open the inner door that leads to the warehouse and carefully pokes his head through, he has an ongoing crime to investigate.

His jaw drops.

All around, the warehouse is bustling with activity. Danny figures there must be some sort of sound proofing on the outer walls, because there was no sign whatsoever from the outside of all these goings-on. Whatever has been happening here, it seems to be drawing to a close. There are stacks of crates all being moved swiftly and efficiently out through the back and onto the docks, from where they're being loaded onto a boat large enough to make Danny wonder just how they managed to sneak it in past the coast guard. It's a huge operation, with at least two dozen men working to move the crates and at least as many others moving about efficiently in order to lend a hand wherever it's needed.

Apart from the foreman barking orders, there's no visble sign of anyone being in charge of the operation. Keeping as low as possible, Danny creeps forward, pulling out his iPhone in order to start recording what he's seeing ―more than keenly aware of the irony, given his little rant to Steve about how to collect evidence the other day― and finds what he hopes is a pretty good vantage point behind a pile of rusted equipment that's been shoved to the side to make room for the new operation. It provides pretty good cover, keeping him out of sight of anyone who's not actively searching for him. At least, that's what he thinks until he feels cold metal pressed up to the back of his neck, accompanied by the distinctive _click_ of the hammer being pulled back on a pistol.

Crap.

"What do we have here?" a voice asks. He doesn't recognize it, but the accent sounds like it originates from somewhere in Britain ―Ireland, maybe― which means only one thing.

"Victor Hesse, I take it?"

"You're not in a position to be asking questions, Detective Williams. I could have sworn you'd been removed from this investigation. I would have thought your partner's example would have sufficed to convince you to keep your distance from my employer."

Danny feels a hot surge of anger at that, and has to force himself to keep still. He has no illusions that Hesse wouldn't put a bullet in the back of his head with little to no provocation. "Yeah, well, it's difficult to deter me, especially when you murder my partner in cold blood. I'm planning on making you regret that for the rest of your life, just so you know."

"Right. Well, that's going to be a little difficult, seeing as how this time tomorrow you'll be dead. The only reason you're not already dead is that my boss has other plans for you first."

Danny doesn't have time so much as to open his mouth to inquire about said plans before something very hard –and annoyingly reminiscent of the butt of someone's pistol– collides with the back of his head, making him see multi-coloured stars. Then everything goes dark.

* * *

When Danny comes to, he's sitting upright in a rolling office chair of all things, his hands zip-tied to the arms, his legs pulled back in order for his ankles to be zip-tied to the wheel supports, which is pretty damned uncomfortable, thank you very much. His head feels as though a whole regimental marching band has taken up residence in there, complete with kettledrums. He licks his lips, finds his mouth drier than the Sahara, and coughs a little bit. There's no way of telling how long he's been here, but he thinks it must be several hours at least. He looks around, trying to get his bearings, but there are no windows in the room, which is entirely bare, save for himself and the chair he is quickly beginning to hate.

The walls are unremarkable, just whitewashed drywall, and he twists awkwardly in his seat in order to take a look at the door. It's made of thick metal with no visible hinges or even a keyhole, though there is a sliding panel which tells him that it's been designed as a cell. Wherever this is, it's definitely not an improvised holding cell, but one made specifically for this purpose. Great.

It's too uncomfortable to keep craning his neck like that, so he subsides in his chair, trying to figure out if there's any way he can get out of here. First thing, of course, is to get untied. He flexes wrists and ankles, but the zip-ties are securely in place, which is a bit of a bitch. Even if he had anything in his pockets with which to cut through them, it's not like he can reach them. Then Danny grins, remembering his tie pin. Of course, getting to the damn tie pin is another story. It's too far down to grab even with his teeth, and Danny huffs in frustration. Okay, time for another plan.

He doesn't have time to so much as begin to formulate said new plan, though, before the door behind him swings open, scraping on the cement floor.

"Detective Williams," a sardonic voice bounces off the walls, which is quite a feat, given how small this cell is. "I am so glad you have decided to join us."

Wo Fat is a little taller in person than Danny imagined from the photograph he saw in a couple of files to which he was hastily denied access, but dressed exactly the same as he always is, in an impeccably tailored white suit, complete with a black domino that appears to be more for show than any real attempt at disguising his features. Danny swallows a groan, wonders just how hard he hit his head, comes to the conclusion that not only was it really hard, but that he was also very likely drugged. Peachy.

"You're a lot uglier in person," he manages weakly. "You're The Shark, I presume?"

Wo Fat's features twist into something perilously close to a smirk. "It's good to know that my reputation has not diminished, in those circles that still count."

"I don't know whether to be flattered or to let you know that you're pretty deluded if you think I count for anything where I come from."

"Don't sell yourself short, Detective Williams. You've become quite the thorn in our side, hasn't he, Victor?"

Danny must be really out of it, he thinks, because he never even noticed Victor Hesse come in behind Wo Fat. Now he's standing off to the side, casually cleaning under his fingernails with the biggest Bowie knife Danny has ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. Crap.

"I think this is the part where I tell you you're not going to get away with this."

Wo Fat throws back his head with what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. "Oh, bless you, Detective, I have already gotten away with it. I've been getting away with these things for nigh on thirty years. What I am doing today, Detective Williams, is tying up loose ends."

Danny swallows in spite of himself. "Loose ends?"

"Indeed. You, my dear Detective, are very little more than a means to an end. I have everything in place for my plan of world domination—"

"Oh my God, he really wasn't kidding when he said you were planning that," Danny lets his head drop in despair, because, really? World domination?

"Our friend, The Seal? No, he wasn't. He isn't a man prone to exaggeration, although he is prone to making quasi-suicidal leaps into whatever struggle he believes is right. It's most inconvenient that he manages to survive every single time. Which is why you're here, incidentally."

Danny's heart skips a beat. "You're trying to use me as bait."

"Got it in one," Hesse smirks from behind Wo Fat. "All our reports indicate you and our costumed friend enjoy a very close relationship. But even if those reports are wrong, The Seal has never been one to let an innocent die or even be harmed because of him. He'll be along before long, see if he isn't, and we'll be waiting for him."

"You really think he's that stupid?"

Wo Fat clasps his hands behind his back. "The Seal is something of a sentimentalist. It plays havoc with his judgment. Besides, he has a serious dislike of doomsday weapons. I think you caught a glimpse of mine while you were in the warehouse, yes?"

"The blueprints. The cannon." Suddenly things start clicking together in Danny's mind. None of it makes sense, except that if he flips it all on its head and pretends that normal-people logic doesn't apply (like everything else in his life since Steve first dropped in on him), then it actually does make a weird kind of sense. "The diamonds, the silver, you needed all of it for whatever you're building. Like, components or something. You murdered Meka because he was too close, because he came across your operation. I bet you anything you had set up shop in that warehouse where your flunky here murdered him." He directs a glare at Hesse. "I am personally going to rip your spleen out past your tonsils for that, by the way."

For a moment Hesse doesn't so much as flinch. Then he takes a slow step forward and deliberately kicks Danny hard in the chest, knocking him back and tipping the chair over. Danny falls awkwardly, his head, shoulder and knee smacking painfully on the concrete floor. He swears, tries to catch his breath enough to speak again, eyes screwed shut against the sudden pain.

"You are far too clever for your own good, Detective," Wo Fat bends over him, hands still clasped behind his back. "One of these days, it will get you killed. In fact, if all goes to plan, that day has come. I will leave you to think about that, while we await your already-doomed rescue. Good day," Wo Fat inclines his head briefly before he motions to Hesse, and the two of them leave him entirely alone.

* * *

Sitting by himself and stewing in his own juices is not Danny's idea of a good time, but he's even less thrilled at the idea that Steve is going to make some sort of suicidally noble attempt to come save him. It never occurs to him that Steve won't come, because he's pretty sure that it wouldn't occur to Steve _not_ to come, damn him. So he's not even remotely surprised when, less than thirty minutes later, the door scrapes open again.

"You know it's a trap, right?" he greets Steve.

Steve grins at him, teeth very white under his mask. Danny has to remind himself that this is a very bad time to be admiring Steve's chiseled physique under his costume. "Of course it's a trap. But don't worry, Danno, I've taken care of all of the guards and disabled the security camera feed to this section of the compound."

"Compound?"

"This is The Shark's secret lair. In fact, it's a pretty good thing you got yourself kidnapped, because that meant I was able to follow you all the way here and find it. Otherwise it might have taken me years to find its location. I will hand it to him, he has a flair for the dramatic."

Danny snorts. "Unlike you?"

Steve crouches next to him, neatly severing one of the zip-ties with a knife. "At least my secret base isn't under a volcano. I have a very nice beach house which just happens to have a large underground addition to it."

"Why couldn't I fall for a guy who understands that an addition to a house is a garage or a playroom for the kids?" Danny laments as Steve frees his other hand, rubbing his wrist gingerly and trying to make the blood start circulating again.

"Aw, Danno, that's touching."

"Seriously, don't call me that —ow," Danny's legs threaten to buckle when Steve hauls him upright, and he stamps both feet hard on the ground, trying to rid himself of the pins and needles in his feet, grateful for Steve's steadying presence, keeping him standing. Even under the mask he can see that Steve's expression is anxious, and he's oddly touched by the concern even as Steve briskly checks him over for hidden injuries.

"Okay, well, it looks like you have a mild concussion, and I'm guessing you were drugged," he says, rubbing his thumb gently over a pin-prick mark in the crook of Danny's elbow, confirming Danny's earlier suspicions. "But that looks to be about it. You think you can walk?"

"I can even run if needs be. You got a plan for getting out of here? Wait," he stops as what Steve said earlier finally registers. "Did you say _volcano_?"

"Yup!" Steve agrees cheerfully. "But don't worry. As soon as we've disabled the Death Ray, I have an escape route all planned out."

"Death Ray?"

Steve gives him an incredulous look. "You didn't know The Shark was planning to enact his plan of world domination by using his doomsday device?"

Danny scrubs at his face. "Yeah, okay, he mentioned it, but he never said Death Ray, all right? Cut me some slack, here. I've been drugged and knocked around, and up until a few weeks ago there was no such thing as superheroes or Death Rays or plans for world domination, all right?"

"I'll cut you some slack later. Right now we have to disable the device and get out of here. You with me?"

Danny flaps both hands exasperatedly. "Do I have a choice?" He motions toward the door with a flourish. "Lead the way, since I have no idea where we are. How did you find me, anyway?"

"Oh, I put a tracking chip in your shoe."

Danny almost stops in his tracks. "What? Oh my God, you —you don't even know how many things are wrong with that statement, do you? Okay, leaving aside the creepy, stalkerish aspect of putting a _tracking chip_ in my _shoe_, how could you even know which pair to put it in? It's not like I just have the one. Oh, God," he doesn't even let Steve speak before realization dawns. "You bugged _all_ my shoes, didn't you? Even my sandals?"

"How else was I supposed to keep track of you and keep you safe?"

"There are so many things wrong with you, I don't know where to begin," Danny mutters. "Fine, let's go disable this Death Ray and get the hell out of here—" A sudden noise off to the side makes him look up in time to see Victor Hesse bearing down on them at full tilt, and he barely has time to begin shouting a warning before there's a sharp pain in his neck and it feels like all his muscles have locked up. Then, for the second time in as many days, everything goes dark.

* * *

The next time Danny comes to, he's been zip-tied back to the damned chair, which is really just an indication of how much his life sucks some days. Not only that, but the spill he took earlier when his chair was knocked over has taken its toll his pants are torn, several shirt buttons are missing, and his tie has landed over his right shoulder, not to mention the brand-new collection of scrapes and bruises, and what feels like a mild electrical burn on his neck to go with the impressive egg forming on the back of his skull from where Victor Hesse cold-cocked him the first time. Knocked out, drugged, and now Tasered. This day just keeps getting better. He's still thirsty, too, which is annoying, but he puts aside the thoughts of his physical discomfort in order to try to his surroundings, which have changed considerably from the tiny cell from which Steve helped him escaped before.

The room he's in is very large, but his chair has been turned so that he's facing the closest wall, making it all but impossible to see the rest of the room without painfully twisting his neck. The next thing he spots is another figure, similarly bound to a chair, seated a few yards away to his left, and his heart lodges in his throat, because he was really hoping Steve had managed to elude capture. He'd recognize that green spandex anywhere, and it's not as though the mask can conceal what he already knows is under there. Not that Danny isn't perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but he'd sort of been counting on Steve to help him get out of there once it was obvious he'd made it in.

"Hey St–" He bites his tongue, stops just short of revealing Steve's real name to his enemies. "Uh, Seal!" He feels stupid, but presses on anyway, swallowing in an attempt to moisten his mouth a bit. "You okay?"

Steve doesn't stir, and Danny feels his chest tighten with anxiety when he spots a trail of congealed blood running from his temple all the way down his neck.

"Ah, Detective Williams, so good of you to join us once more. I was beginning to think that Victor here had been a trifle overzealous with the application of blunt force trauma. He's loyal to a fault, but can occasionally be too exuberant in his enthusiasm for his work. I suppose one can only admire his work ethic, but still, I will confess it's sometimes inconvenient."

He blinks a little stupidly, looks around until he finds the owner of the voice. Wo Fat is standing off to one side, flanked as usual by Victor Hesse, still playing with his Bowie knife.

"You know, watching you play with that thing, anyone else might think you were trying to compensate for something."

Wo Fat gives Hesse a quelling look, effectively pre-empting his doing anything stupid at Danny's provocation, so Danny takes another tack.

"What have you done to The Seal?"

"Oh, our mutual friend Steven, here?" Wo Fat grins evilly at Danny's evident surprise. "Don't look so startled, Detective Williams, I am well acquainted with the McGarrett clan. We go back a very long way, although it's my hope that today will mark the end of the very long and very tiresome game of cat and mouse that I have played with them for so many years. Victor, I think our guest has slept long enough, don't you?"

Hesse glances up at The Shark, nods once in acknowledgement, then steps forward and delivers a vicious backhand to Steve's face, rocking him backward in his chair. Steve groans audibly, head lolling, but his eyelashes flutter and he seems to come to, a little at least. Danny's never been so happy in his life to see anyone wake up.

"Steve! You okay?"

He gets a weak cough and a nod. Apparently he's a little too out of it to notice or care that Danny used his real name. "M'fine, Danny. You?"

"I'm super. You, uh, got a plan up your sleeve to get us out of here? Because right now is when that vaunted Seal resourcefulness would come in handy."

"Workin' on it."

"That's not very reassuring!"

"Enough!" Wo Fat drives the back of his hand against Danny's face so hard Danny's pretty sure he'll have whiplash from the blow. "You are here simply as insurance, Detective Williams, to ensure that The Seal doesn't attempt any more of his ridiculous heroics in an attempt to save humanity."

"You won't get away with this, Wo Fat!" Steve spits, but his tone lacks his usual conviction.

"I already covered that part of the exchange," Danny points out, but they're not listening to him.

"Oh, I think you'll find that I will. Victor?" At a gesture from Wo Fat, Hesse hits Steve again, almost casually, and blood blossoms on his upper lip, trickling from his nose.

"Hey, pudding-for-brains! Why don't you try picking on someone who's not tied up?" Danny yells. "See how tough you are then, when you're not ambushing people from behind or murdering old men in their homes?"

Wo Fat clucks his tongue. "I suggest you keep a civil tongue in your head, Detective, or I shall be forced to have Victor cut it out with that very large knife of his. If it's any consolation, I am given to understand that he keeps it very sharp. I would hate to have my tongue cut out with a dull knife, wouldn't you?"

He walks over slowly to Steve, hands clasped behind his back, and gives him a long, hard look. "Let's get on with this, shall we?"

Not for the first time, Danny starts to get a very bad feeling about the whole situation.

* * *

"Well, I have been waiting a very long time for this, I won't deny it," Wo Fat says. "I think, also, that I should cut to the chase, don't you? I imagine you've been trying to figure out my endgame this entire time, yes?"

"The thought had crossed my mind," Steve admits, looking curious in spite of himself. "I know about the Death Ray, but that's the extent of it."

Wo Fat, it appears, is not immune to the arch villain's traditional predilection for monologuing. This, as far as Danny is concerned, is all to the good. So long as his attention is on revealing just how clever he was so that Steve can admire him or whatever, that means Danny is free to work in relative peace, so long as he keeps an eye on Hesse. Right now, though everyone's attention is focused on Steve. Danny catches his eye, nods, tries to keep as still as possible, as though all the fight was beaten out of him with that last set of blows. His tie is still flung over one shoulder, though, and that means the tie clip that Steve gave him as a present is right there, inches away. It's a step in the right direction, at least.

"It's taken years of painstaking planning to get to this final stage," Wo Fat is saying to Steve, "but I think you'll agree that the end result will be quite breathtaking."

Slowly, excruciatingly, Danny uses his teeth to drag at his tie, the fabric dry against his tongue, until his teeth scrape over the metal of the tie clip, his neck twisting painfully in the process. He hears the fabric tear a little bit as he pulls the clip free, curses the loss of his second-best tie, but he can't help but feel a moment of triumph when he not only obtains his tie clip, but manages to drop it directly into his hand. The tricky part now will be to cut through the zip tie without attracting attention, and without lacerating his hand in the process.

Luckily, Wo Fat is too busy pointing Steve in the direction of his masterpiece, or whatever. Danny's mostly tuning him out by now, but suddenly his head snaps up.

"Whoa! Wait a second. You're actually going to use the Death Ray?"

Wo Fat smiles evilly (and there really isn't another word for it). "Do try to keep up, Detective. I realize it's difficult for someone of your inferior intellect, but I'm not in the habit of repeating myself. See for yourself." He gestures expansively with one arm to something that lies just beyond Danny's shoulder.

The next thing Danny knows Hesse has grabbed his chair by the back and dragged it around one hundred and eighty degrees, giving him a perfect view of a giant contraption that's far too phallic-looking for its own good. It doesn't really look like the blueprints Danny saw, but then, he thinks that nothing ever looks like its blueprints to people who don't know what they're looking at. Looking at the thing now, Danny figures that if he ever would have wanted to design his very own Death Ray, that's definitely what it would look like.

"I don't believe it. You've actually filled almost every cliché in the book. Is there like a super villain Bingo card you all get issued? Underground lair underneath a volcano? Check. Grandiose plan to rule the world? Check. Morally bankrupt and murderous henchman? Check. All you need is a fluffy white cat, some flashy rings, and you'll be all set. The only way you could make this better is if you were an albino. Uh, where exactly is that thing pointing, anyway?"

Danny's babbling, he realizes this, but he can't quite help himself, because he's got a pretty good idea exactly where that thing is pointing, and the thought that there is absolutely nothing he can do to warn Rachel, to get Grace to safety, makes the blood run cold in his veins even as he works furiously to free himself without getting noticed.

"Why, straight at the heart of Honolulu, of course. I think that obliterating a small island ought to attract enough attention, don't you?" Wo Fat lets out a laugh that sends chills down Danny's spine, and punches a code into a keypad on the side of the device. "Once they see what I'm capable of, no one will be able to stand in my way!"

"There's nearly a million people on that island!" Steve yells indignantly, and both Wo Fat and Hesse turn to him just as Danny feels the zip tie on his right hand give way. "You'll be murdering innocent women and children, you craven snake!"

Danny can tell Steve has realized what he's doing, is raising a fuss to keep their attention away from him, which means he has to move fast. He wipes his hand quickly on his pants to make sure he won't drop the pin at the wrong moment, and now that his hand is free he's able to make short work of the zip tie on his left wrist, folds at the waist to try to free his legs, adrenaline making his heart race and blood roar in his ears. One ankle comes free, and Danny knows his luck has run out when there's a yell of outrage from Victor Hesse.

He barely has time to stagger to his feet, hampered by the chair to which he's still attached by one leg as Hesse lunges at him with the Bowie knife. He manages to twist out of the way, uses Hesse's momentum against him in order to grab the arm wielding the knife and twists as hard as he can. Danny may not have all of Steve's abilities, but he hasn't been a cop for fifteen years for nothing, and he's learned to fight dirty. Hesse's hold on the knife loosens, although he doesn't let go, and that's the opening Danny was waiting for. He steps in, uses his hips as a pivot point, and drives his elbow hard into the henchman's temple, watching in satisfaction as Hesse staggers, Bowie knife slipping from his grasp. Danny snatches up the knife, slices neatly through the remaining zip tie on his ankle, and rounds on Hesse again, hoping he hasn't left him enough time to recover. Hesse is still shaking his head to rid himself of the stars he's no doubt seeing, and Danny lunges at him, bearing him to the ground. For a second he finds himself with the man responsible for his partner's murder lying prone beneath him, the Bowie knife used in God knows how many murders right there in his hand. It would be so easy, he thinks.

"Danny! No!" Steve yells, and that's enough to snap him out of it. Hesse is staring at him, terror in his eyes, and Danny looks at him contemptuously and cracks his head against the floor just hard enough to knock him senseless.

Confident that Hesse is out of the game Danny rounds on Wo Fat, half-expecting him to be holding Steve hostage in return for Danny's surrender. Steve, however, hasn't been idle in the intervening seconds. He's managed to tip over his chair, taking Wo Fat by surprise and knocking him to the ground. Wo Fat is still scrambling to his feet, giving Danny just enough time to dart over and cut Steve's right hand loose, dropping the Bowie knife in his lap so he can do the rest of the work. He then launches himself in a bull rush at the still-prone Wo Fat, knocking him back to the floor and dealing him the hardest punch he can muster.

"That's for threatening my daughter!"

"Danny!" Steve's voice once again cuts through the red haze that seems to have descended over everything. "The device!"

He delivers one last punch to Wo Fat for good measure, scrambles to his feet and back toward the Death Ray, though he has no idea how to even begin deactivating it. It's huge and gleaming, sparkling in the artificial light of the enormous room. He can't even see the end of it, which is presumably sticking out of the side of the volcano somewhere. Instead he's faced with an indecipherable control panel, all touch screens and buttons and keypads.

"Steve, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Steve is already locking horns with Wo Fat, who has recovered from the initial shock and is now giving as good as he's getting. It's probably a good thing Steve got him away from the man, Danny thinks a little numbly, watching the two opponents trade blows, because otherwise he'd probably be dead of a broken neck. Steve ducks a particularly vicious roundhouse kick, his cape swirling impressively now that he's loose from his bonds, dances back out of reach just long enough to shout back.

"You can't deactivate it, try the self-destruct sequence!"

Danny swears under his breath. "It's not like there's an instruction manual, Steven!"

"It's a number sequence! Try using the most significant dates in the files!"

"Are you kidding me?" Danny yells, then takes a breath, flicks a switch that looks like it probably acts like a safety lock. "Okay, okay," he mutters, starts punching in as many of the dates as he can remember, all the while cursing superheroes with eidetic memories who can probably do this in their sleep. A moment later, though, there's a whining sound from the machine and an alarm begins to blare somewhere overhead while a computerized female voice warns them that the self-destruct has been activated. Danny lets out a whoop of triumph.

"That's what I'm talking about!"

"Danny, come on!"

Steve is dragging him away by the elbow and through the closest door into an exit tunnel, even as Wo Fat throws himself with a cry of desperation at the Death Ray, frantically punching numbers into the keypad in a futile attempt to deactivate the self-destruct sequence. The computer informs them confidently that they now have two minutes to vacate the premises.

There's no time to look back, no time to see whether Wo Fat is dogging their heels or still trying to save his precious machine. No time to stay and make sure that he won't manage to deactivate the self-destruct sequence, either. Danny puts his head down and sprints all-out after Steve, trying to keep up with his partner's longer strides, trusting him to know what he's doing and where he's going. A moment later he spots light up ahead, puts on a burst of speed just as a deafening roar makes itself heard right behind them. There's a blast of hot air and Danny is propelled forward, landing so hard on the ground that he sees stars, his ears ringing. Dimly he's aware of hands grabbing him, pulling him up and half-dragging him forward until both he and Steve collapse on the sandy ground outside Wo Fat's secret underground refuge.

For a few minutes they can do nothing but lie where they fell, sucking in great gulps of air. Finally, when Danny's caught his breath, he rolls over and pats Steve's chest a little awkwardly.

"My hero."

Steve coughs and laughs. "And don't you forget it."

"You got a plan for getting back home?"

"Working on it."

"So that's a no on the plan, then."

Steve smirks at him. "I was thinking I would kiss you senseless first, and then we'd worry about getting rescued."

Danny thinks about that for a second. "Yeah, okay."

After all, as Steve's plans go, this one isn't half bad.

~END~


End file.
